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SOCIAL  FORCES  EM  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA. 

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HARPER   &    BROTHERS,   PUBLISHERS,    N.  Y. 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN 
ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 


BY 

H.   G.  WELLS 

AUTHOR  OF 

"  THE  FUTURE  IN  AMERICA  " 
'SOCIALISM  AND  THE  GREAT  STATE  "  ETC. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK    AND    LONDON 

MCMXIV 


COPYRIGHT.    1914.    BY   HARPER  ft   BROTHERS 


PUBLISHED    APRIL.     1814 

o-o 


College 
Library 


UN 

^79 
CONTENTS 


PAGE 

THE  COMING  OF  BLERIOT i 

MY  FIRST  FLIGHT g 

OFF  THE  CHAIN 17 

OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 25 

WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 38 

THE  LABOUR  UNREST 50 

SOCIAL  PANACEAS 94 

SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP? 102 

THE  GREAT  STATE 112 

THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 155 

THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 173 

THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 199 

ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 205 

ABOUT  SIR  THOMAS  MORE 214 

TRAFFIC  AND  REBUILDING 219 

THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 224 

DIVORCE 242 

THE  SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 255 

THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  MOTHERHOOD 268 

DOCTORS 275 

AN  AGE  OF  SPECIALISATION 281 

«^s  THERE  A  PEOPLE? 287 

THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 293 

THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 321 

THE  POSSIBLE  COLLAPSE  OF  CIVILISATION 383 

THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN 390 

SOME  POSSIBLE  DISCOVERIES 397 

THE  HUMAN  ADVENTURE 409 


1138117 


SOCIAL   FORCES    IN 
ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

SYNOPSIS 

Bleriot  arrives  and  sets  him  thinking,     (i) 

He  flies,  (2) 

And  deduces  certain  consequences  of  cheap  travel.  (3) 

He  considers  the  King,  and  speculates  on  the  New 

Epoch ;     (4) 

He  thinks  Imperially,     (5) 

And  then,  coming  to  details,  about  Labour,     (6) 
Socialism,     (7) 
And  Modern  Warfare.     (8) 
He  discourses  on  the  Modern  Novel,     (9) 
And  the  Public  Library;     (10) 
Criticises  Chesterton,  Belloc,     (n) 
And  Sir  Thomas  More,     (12) 
And  deals  with  the  London  Traffic  Problem  as  a 

Socialist  should.     (13) 
He  doubts  the  existence  of  Sociology,     (14) 
Discusses  Divorce,     (15) 
Schoolmasters,     (16) 
Motherhood,     (17) 


SYNOPSIS 

Doctors,     (18) . 

And  Specialisation;     (19) 

Questions  if  there  is  a  People,     (20) 

And  diagnoses  the  Political  Disease  of  our  Times.  (21) 

He  then  speculates  upon  the  future  of  the  American 

Population,     (22) 

Considers  a  possible  set-back  to  civilisation,     (23) 
The  Ideal  Citizen,     (24) 
The  still  undeveloped  possibilities  of  Science,    (25), 

and — in  the  broadest  spirit — 
The  Human  Adventure.     (26) 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND 
AND  AMERICA 


THE  COMING  OF  BLfiRIOT 

(July,  1909) 

THE  telephone  bell  rings  with  the  petulant  per- 
sistence that  marks  a  trunk  call,  and  I  go  in  from 
some  ineffectual  gymnastics  on  the  lawn  to  deal  with 
the  irruption.  There  is  the  usual  trouble  in  connect- 
ing up,  minute  voices  in  Folkestone  and  Dover  and 
London  call  to  one  another  and  are  submerged  by 
buzzings  and  throbbings.  Then  in  elfin  tones  the  real 
message  comes  through:  "Bleriot  has  crossed  the 
Channel.  .  .  .  An  article  .  .  .  about  what  it  means." 

I  make  a  hasty  promise  and  go  out  and  tell  my 
friends. 

From  my  garden  I  look  straight  upon  the  Channel, 
and  there  are  whitecaps  upon  the  water,  and  the 
iris  and  tamarisk  are  all  asway  with  the  south-west 
wind  that  was  also  blowing  yesterday.  M.  Bleriot 
has  done  very  well,  and  Mr.  Latham,  his  rival,  had 
jolly  bad  luck.  That  is  what  it  means  to  us  first 

i 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  all.  It  also,  I  reflect  privately,  means  that  I  have 
underestimated  the  possible  stability  of  aeroplanes. 
I  did  not  expect  anything  of  the  sort  so  soon.  This 
is  a  good  five  years  before  my  reckoning  of  the  year 
before  last. 

We  all,  I  think,  regret  that  being  so  near  we  were 
not  among  the  fortunate  ones  who  saw  that  little 
flat  shape  skim  landward  out  of  the  blue;  surely  they 
have  an  enviable  memory;  and  then  we  fell  talking 
and  disputing  about  what  that  swift  arrival  may 
signify.  It  starts  a  swarm  of  questions. 

First  one  remarks  that  here  is  a  thing  done,  and 
done  with  an  astonishing  effect  of  ease,  that  was  in- 
credible not  simply  to  ignorant  people,  but  to  men 
well  informed  in  these  matters.  It  cannot  be 
fifteen  years  ago  since  Sir  Hiram  Maxim  made  the 
first  machine  that  could  lift  its  weight  from  the 
ground,  and  I  well  remember  how  the  clumsy  quality 
of  that  success  confirmed  the  universal  doubt  that 
men  could  ever  in  any  effectual  manner  fly. 

Sifice  then  a  conspiracy  of  accidents  has  changed 
the  whole  problem;  the  bicycle  and  its  vibrations 
developed  the  pneumatic  tyre,  the  pneumatic  tyre 
rendered  a  comfortable  mechanically  driven  road 
vehicle  possible,  a  motor-car  set  an  enormous  pre- 
mium on  the  development  of  very  light,  very  effi- 
cient engines,  and  at  last  the  engineer  was  able  to 
offer  the  experimentalists  in  gliding  one  strong 
enough  and  light  enough  for  the  new  purpose.  And 
here  we  are!  Of,  rather,  M.  Bleriot  is! 

2 


THE  COMING  OF  BLfiRIOT 

What  does  it  mean  for  us? 

One  meaning,  I  think,  stands  out  plainly  enough, 
unpalatable  enough  to  our  national  pride.  This 
thing  from  first  to  last  was  made  abroad.  Of  all  that 
made  it  possible  we  can  only  claim  so  much  as  is 
due  to  the  improvement  of  the  bicycle.  Gliding 
began  abroad  while  our  young  men  of  muscle  and 
courage  were  braving  the  dangers  of  the  cricket 
field.  The  motor-car  and  its  engine  was  being 
worked  out  "over  there,"  while  in  this  country  the 
mechanically  propelled  road  vehicle,  lest  it  should 
frighten  the  carriage  horses  of  the  gentry,  was  going 
meticulously  at  four  miles  an  hour  behind  a  man 
with  a  red  flag.  Over  there,  where  the  prosperous 
classes  have  some  regard  for  education  and  some 
freedom  of  imaginative  play,  where  people  discuss 
all  sorts  of  things  fearlessly,  and  have  a  respect  for 
science,  this  has  been  achieved. 

And  now  our  insularity  is  breached  by  the  for- 
eigner who  has  got  ahead  with  flying. 

It  means,  I  take  it,  first  and  foremost  for  us,  that 
the  world  cannot  wait  for  the  English. 

It  is  not  the  first  warning  we  have  had.  It  has 
been  raining  warnings  upon  us;  never  was  a  slack- 
ing, dull  people  so  liberally  served  with  warnings  of 
what  was  in  store  for  them.  But  this  event — this 
foreigner-invented,  foreigner-built,  foreigner-steered 
thing,  taking  our  silver  streak  as  a  bird  soars  across 
a  rivulet — puts  the  case  dramatically.  We  have 
fallen  behind  in  the  quality  of  our  manhood.  In  the 

3 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

men  of  means  and  leisure  in  this  island  there  was 
neither  enterprise  enough,  imagination  enough, 
knowledge  nor  skill  enough  to  lead  in  this  matter. 
I  do  not  see  how  one  can  go  into  the  history  of  this 
development  and  arrive  at  any  other  conclusion. 
The  French  and  Americans  can  laugh  at  our  aero- 
planes, the  Germans  are  ten  years  ahead  of  our 
poor  navigables.  We  are  displayed  a  soft,  rather 
backward  people.  Either  we  are  a  people  essen- 
tially and  incurably  inferior,  or  there  is  something 
wrong  in  our  training,  something  benumbing  in  our 
atmosphere  and  circumstances.  That  is  the  first  and 
gravest  intimation  in  M.  Bleriot's  feat. 

The  second  is  that,  in  spite  of  our  fleet,  this  is 
no  longer,  from  the  military  point  of  view,  an  in- 
accessible island. 

So  long  as  one  had  to  consider  the  navigable 
balloon  the  aerial  side  of  warfare  remained  unim- 
portant. A  Zeppelin  is  little  good  for  any  purpose 
but  scouting  and  espionage.  It  can  carry  very  little 
weight  in  proportion  to  its  vast  size,  and,  what  is 
more  important,  it  cannot  drop  things  without  send- 
ing itself  up  like  a  bubble  in  soda  water.  An  armada 
of  navigables  sent  against  this  island  would  end  in 
a  dispersed,  deflated  state,  chiefly  in  the  seas  be- 
tween Orkney  and  Norway — though  I  say  it  who 
should  not.  But  these  aeroplanes  can  fly  all  round 
the  fastest  navigable  that  ever  drove  before  the 
wind;  they  can  drop  weights,  take  up  weights,  and 
do  all  sorts  of  able,  inconvenient  things.  They  are 

4 


THE  COMING  OF  BLfiRIOT 

birds.  As  for  the  birds,  so  for  aeroplanes;  there  is 
an  upward  limit  of  size.  They  are  not  going  to  be 
very  big,  but  they  are  going  to  be  very  able  and 
active.  Within  a  year  we  shall  have — or  rather 
they  will  have — aeroplanes  capable  of  starting  from 
Calais,  let  us  say,  circling  over  London,  dropping  a 
hundredweight  or  so  of  explosive  upon  the  printing 
machines  of  The  Times,  and  returning  securely  to 
Calais  for  another  similar  parcel.  They  are  things 
neither  difficult  nor  costly  to  make.  For  the  price 
of  a  Dreadnought  one  might  have  hundreds.  They 
will  be  extremely  hard  to  hit  with  any  sort  of  missile. 
I  do  not  think  a  large  army  of  under-educated,  under- 
trained,  extremely  unwilling  conscripts  is  going  to 
be  any  good  against  this  sort  of  thing. 

1  do  not  think  that  the  arrival  of  M.  Bleriot  means 
a  panic  resort  to  conscription.     It  is  extremely  de- 
sirable that  people  should  realise  that  these  foreign 
machines  are  not  a  temporary  and  incidental  advan- 
tage that  we  can  make  good  by  fussing  and  demand- 
ing eight,  and  saying  we  won't  wait,  and  so  on,  and 
then  subsiding  into  indolence  again.     They  are  just 
the  first  fruits  of  a  steady,  enduring  lead  that  the 
foreigner  has  won.     The  foreigner  is  ahead  of  us  in 
education,  and  this  is  especially  true  of  the  middle 
and  upper  classes,  from  which  invention  and  enter- 
prise come — or,  in  our  own  case,  do  not  come.     He 
makes  a  better  class  of  man  than  we  do.     His  science 
is  better  than  ours.     His  training  is  better  than  ours. 
His    imagination    is    livelier.     His    mind    is    more 

2  5 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

active.  His  requirements  in  a  novel,  for  example, 
are  not  kindly,  sedative  pap;  his  uncensored  plays 
deal  with  reality.  His  schools  are  places  for  vigorous 
education  instead  of  genteel  athleticism,  and  his 
home  has  books  in  it,  and  thought  and  conversation. 
Our  homes  and  schools  are  relatively  dull  and  un- 
inspiring; there  is  no  intellectual  guide  or  stir  in 
them;  and  to  that  we  owe  this  new  generation  of 
nicely  behaved,  unenterprising  sons,  who  play  golf 
and  dominate  the  tailoring  of  the  world,  while  Bra- 
zilians, Frenchmen,  Americans,  and  Germans  fly. 

That  we  are  hopelessly  behindhand  in  aeronautics  is 
not  a  fact  by  itself.  It  is  merely  an  indication  that  we 
are  behindhand  in  our  mechanical  knowledge  and  in- 
vention. M .  B16riot's  aeroplane  points  also  to  the  fleet. 

The  struggle  for  naval  supremacy  is  not  merely  a 
struggle  in  shipbuilding  and  expenditure.  Much 
more  is  it  a  struggle  in  knowledge  and  invention. 
It  is  not  the  Power  that  has  the  most  ships  or  the 
biggest  ships  that  is  going  to  win  in  a  naval  conflict. 
It  is  the  Power  that  thinks  quickest  of  what  to  do, 
is  most  resourceful  and  inventive.  Eighty  Dread- 
noughts manned  by  dull  men  are  only  eighty  targets 
for  a  quicker  adversary.  Well,  is  there  any  reason 
to  suppose  that  our  Navy  is  going  to  keep  above  the 
general  national  level  in  these  things?  Is  the  Navy 
bright? 

The  arrival  of  M.  Bleriot  suggests  most  horribly 
to  me  how  far  behind  we  must  be  in  all  matters  of 
ingenuity,  device,  and  mechanical  contrivance.  I 

6 


THE  COMING  OF  BLfiRIOT 

am  reminded  again  of  the  days  during  the  Boer  war, 
when  one  realised  that  it  had  never  occurred  to  our 
happy-go-lucky  Army  that  it  was  possible  to  make 
a  military  use  of  barbed  wire  or  construct  a  trench 
to  defy  shrapnel.  Suppose  in  the  North  Sea  we  got 
a  surprise  like  that,  and  fished  out  a  parboiled,  half- 
drowned  admiral  explaining  what  a  confoundedly 
slim,  unexpected,  almost  ungentlemanly  thing  the 
enemy  had  done  to  him. 

Very  probably  the  Navy  is  the  bright  exception 
to  the  British  system;  its  officers  are  rescued  from 
the  dull  homes  and  dull  schools  of  their  class  while 
still  of  tender  years,  and  shaped  after  a  fashion  of 
their  own.  But  M.  B16riot  reminds  us  that  we  may 
no  longer  shelter  and  degenerate  behind  these  blue 
backs.  And  the  keenest  men  at  sea  are  none  the 
worse  for  having  keen  men  on  land  behind  them. 

Are  we  an  awakening  people? 

It  is  the  vital  riddle  of  our  time.  I  look  out  upon 
the  windy  Channel  and  think  of  all  those  millions 
just  over  there,  who  seem  to  get  busier  and  keener 
every  hour.  I  could  imagine  the  day  of  reckoning 
coming  like  a  swarm  of  birds. 

Here  the  air  is  full  of  the  clamour  of  rich  and  pros- 
perous people  invited  to  pay  taxes,  and  beyond 
measure  bitter.  They  are  going  to  live  abroad,  cut 
their  charities,  dismiss  old  servants,  and  do  all  sorts 
of  silly,  vindictive  things.  We  seem  to  be  doing 
feeble  next-to-nothings  in  the  endowment  of  research. 
Not  one  in  twenty  of  the  boys  of  the  middle  and 

7 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN    ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

upper  classes  learns  German  or  gets  more  than  a  mis- 
leading smattering  of  physical  science.  Most  of 
them  never  learn  to  speak  French.  Heaven  alone 
knows  what  they  do  with  their  brains !  The  British 
reading  and  thinking  public  probably  does  not  num- 
ber fifty  thousand  people  all  told.  It  is  difficult  to 
see  whence  the  necessary  impetus  for  a  national 
renascence  is  to  come.  .  .  .  The  universities  are  poor 
and  spiritless,  with  no  ambition  to  lead  the  country. 
I  met  a  Boy  Scout  recently.  He  was  hopeful  in  his 
way,  but  a  little  inadequate,  I  thought,  as  a  basis 
for  confidence  in  the  future  of  the  Empire. 

We  have  still  our  Derby  Day,  of  course.  .  .  . 

Apart  from  these  patriotic  solicitudes,  M.  Bleriot 
has  set  quite  another  train  of  thought  going  in  my 
mind.  The  age  of  natural  democracy  is  surely  at 
an  end  through  these  machines.  There  comes  a 
time  when  men  will  be  sorted  out  into  those  who  will 
have  the  knowledge,  nerve,  and  courage  to  do  these 
splendid,  dangerous  things,  and  those  who  will  prefer 
the  humbler  level.  I  do  not  think  numbers  are 
going  to  matter  so  much  in  the  warfare  of  the  future, 
and  that  when  organised  intelligence  differs  from  the 
majority,  the  majority  will  have  no  adequate  power 
of  retort.  The  common  man  with  a  pike,  being  only 
sufficiently  indignant  and  abundant,  could  chase  the 
eighteenth-century  gentleman  as  he  chose,  but  I  fail 
to  see  what  he  can  do  in  the  way  of  mischief  to  an 
elusive  chevalier  with  wings.  But  that  opens  top 
wide  a  discussion  for  me  to  enter  upon  now. 


MY  FIRST  FLIGHT 

(EASTBOURNE,  August  5,  1912,  three  years  later} 

HITHERTO  my  only  flights  have  been  flights  of 
imagination,  but  this  morning  I  flew.  I  spent  about 
ten  or  fifteen  minutes  in  the  air;  we  went  out  to  sea, 
soared  up,  came  back  over  the  land,  circled  higher, 
planed  steeply  down  to  the  water,  and  I  landed  with 
the  conviction  that  I  had  had  only  the  foretaste  of 
a  great  store  of  hitherto  unsuspected  pleasures.  At 
the  first  chance  I  will  go  up  again,  and  I  will  go 
higher  and  further. 

This  experience  has  restored  all  the  keenness  of 
my  ancient  interest  in  flying,  which  had  become  a 
little  fagged  and  flat  by  too  much  hearing  and  read- 
ing about  the  thing  and  not  enough  participation. 
Sixteen  years  ago,  in  the  days  of  Langley  and  Lilien- 
thal,  I  was  one  of  the  few  journalists  who  believed 
and  wrote  that  flying  was  possible;  it  affected  my 
reputation  unfavourably,  and  produced  in  the  few 
discouraged  pioneers  of  those  days  a  quite  touching 
gratitude.  Over  my  mantel  as  I  write  hangs  a  very 
blurred  and  bad  but  interesting  photograph  that 
Professor  Langley  sent  me  sixteen  years  ago.  It 
shows  the  flight  of  the  first  piece  of  human  ma- 

9 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

chinery  heavier  than  air  that  ever  kept  itself  up  for 
any  length  of  time.  It  was  a  model,  a  little  affair 
that  would  not  have  lifted  a  cat;  it  went  up  in  a 
spiral  and  came  down  unsmashed,  bringing  back,  like 
Noah's  dove,  the  promise  of  tremendous  things. 

That  was  only  sixteen  years  ago,  and  it  is  amusing 
to  recall  how  cautiously  even  we  out-and-out  be- 
lievers did  our  prophesying.  I  was  quite  a  desperate 
fellow;  I  said  outright  that  in  my  lifetime  we  should 
see  men  flying.  But  I  qualified  that  by  repeating 
that  for  many  years  to  come  it  would  be  an  enterprise 
only  for  quite  fantastic  daring  and  skill.  We  con- 
jured up  stupendous  difficulties  and  risks.  I  was 
deeply  impressed  and  greatly  discouraged  by  a  paper 
a  distinguished  Cambridge  mathematician  produced 
to  show  that  a  flying  machine  was  bound  to  pitch 
fearfully,  that  as  it  flew  on  its  pitching  must  increase 
until  up  went  its  nose,  down  went  its  tail,  and  it  fell 
like  a  knife.  We  exaggerated  every  possibility  of 
instability.  We  imagined  that  when  the  aeroplane 
wasn't  "kicking  up  ahind  and  afore"  it  would  be 
heeling  over  to  the  lightest  side  wind.  A  sneeze 
might  upset  it.  We  contrasted  our  poor  human 
equipment  with  the  instinctive  balance  of  a  bird, 
which  has  had  ten  million  years  of  evolution  by  way 
of  a  start.  .  .  . 

The  waterplane  in  which  I  soared  over  Eastbourne 
this  morning  with  Mr.  Grahame- White  was  as  steady 
as  a  motor-car  running  on  asphalte. 

Then  we  went  on  from  those  anticipations  of 

10 


MY  FIRST  FLIGHT 

swaying  insecurity  to  speculations  about  the  psycho- 
logical and  physiological  effects  of  flying.  Most 
people  who  look  down  from  the  top  of  a  cliff  or  high 
tower  feel  some  slight  qualms  of  dread,  many  feel  a 
quite  sickening  dread.  Even  if  men  struggled  high 
into  the  air,  we  asked,  wouldn't  they  be  smitten  up 
there  by  such  a  lonely  and  reeling  dismay  as  to  lose 
all  self-control  ?  And,  above  all,  wouldn't  the  pitch- 
ing and  tossing  make  them  quite  horribly  sea-sick? 

I  have  always  been  a  little  haunted  by  that  last 
dread.  It  gave  a  little  undertow  of  funk  to  the 
mood  of  lively  curiosity  with  which  I  got  aboard  the 
waterplane  this  morning — that  sort  of  faint,  thin 
funk  that  so  readily  invades  one  on  the  verge  of  any 
new  experience;  when  one  tries  one's  first  dive,  for 
example,  or  pushes  off  for  the  first  time  down  an 
ice  run.  I  thought  I  should  very  probably  be  sea- 
sick— or,  to  be  more  precise,  air-sick;  I  thought  also 
that  I  might  be  very  giddy,  and  that  I  might  get 
thoroughly  cold  and  uncomfortable.  None  of  those 
things  happened. 

I  am  still  in  a  state  of  amazement  at  the  smooth 
steadfastness  of  the  motion.  There  is  nothing  on 
earth  to  compare  with  that,  unless — and  that  I 
can't  judge — it  is  an  ice  yacht  travelling  on  perfect 
ice.  The  finest  motor-car  in  the  world  on  the  best 
road  would  be  a  joggling,  quivering  thing  beside  it. 

To  begin  with,  we  went  out  to  sea  before  the  wind, 
and  the  plane  would  not  readily  rise.  We  went  with 
an  undulating  movement,  leaping  with  a  light  splash- 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ing  pat  upon  the  water,  from  wave  to  wave.  Then 
we  came  about  into  the  wind  and  rose,  and  looking 
over  I  saw  that  there  were  no  longer  those  periodic 
flashes  of  white  foam.  I  was  flying.  And  it  was 
as  still  and  steady  as  dreaming.  I  watched  the  wi- 
dening distance  between  our  floats  and  the  waves. 
It  wasn't  by  any  means  a  windless  day;  there  was  a 
brisk,  fluctuating  breeze  blowing  out  of  the  north 
over  the  downs.  It  seemed  hardly  to  affect  our 
flight  at  all. 

And  as  for  the  giddiness  of  looking  down,  one  does 
not  feel  it  at  all.  It  is  difficult  to  explain  why  this 
should  be  so,  but  it  is  so.  I  suppose  in  such  matters 
I  am  neither  exceptionally  steady-headed  nor  is  my 
head  exceptionally  given  to  swimming.  I  can  stand 
on  the  edge  of  cliffs  of  a  thousand  feet  or  so  and 
look  down,  but  I  can  never  bring  myself  right  up  to 
the  edge  nor  crane  over  to  look  to  the  very  bottom. 
I  should  want  to  lie  down  to  do  that.  And  the  other 
day  I  was  on  that  Belvedere  place  at  the  top  of  the 
Rotterdam  sky-scraper,  a  rather  high  wind  was  blow- 
ing, and  one  looks  down  through  the  chinks  between 
the  boards  one  stands  on  upon  the  heads  of  the 
people  in  the  streets  below;  I  didn't  like  it.  But  this 
morning  I  looked  directly  down  on  a  little  fleet  of 
fishing  boats  over  which  we  passed,  and  on  the 
crowds  assembling  on  the  beach,  and  on  the  bathers 
who  stared  up  at  us  from  the  breaking  surf,  with  an 
entirely  agreeable  exaltation.  And  Eastbourne,  in 
the  early  morning  sunshine,  had  all  the  brightly  de- 

12 


MY  FIRST  FLIGHT 

tailed  littleness  of  a  town  viewed  from  high  up  on 
the  side  of  a  great  mountain. 

When  Mr.  Grahame- White  told  me  we  were  going 
to  plane  down  I  will  confess  I  tightened  my  hold  on 
the  sides  of  the  car  and  prepared  for  something  like 
the  down-going  sensation  of  a  switchback  railway  on 
a  larger  scale.  Just  for  a  moment  there  was  that 
familiar  feeling  of  something  pressing  one's  heart  up 
towards  one's  shoulders,  and  one's  lower  jaw  up  into 
its  socket  and  of  grinding  one's  lower  teeth  against 
the  upper,  and  then  it  passed.  The  nose  of  the  car 
and  all  the  machine  was  slanting  downwards,  we 
were  gliding  quickly  down,  and  yet  there  was  no  feel- 
ing that  one  rushed,  not  even  as  one  rushes  in 
coasting  a  hill  on  a  bicycle.  It  wasn't  a  tithe  of  the 
thrill  of  those  three  descents  one  gets  on  the  great 
mountain  railway  in  the  White  City.  There  one  gets 
a  disagreeable  quiver  up  one's  backbone  from  the 
wheels,  and  a  real  sense  of  falling. 

It  is  quite  peculiar  to  flying  that  one  is  incredulous 
of  any  collision.  Some  time  ago  I  was  in  a  motor- 
car that  ran  over  and  killed  a  small  dog,  and  this 
wretched  little  incident  has  left  an  open  wound  upon 
my  nerves.  I  am  never  quite  happy  in  a  car  now; 
I  can't  help  keeping  an  apprehensive  eye  ahead. 
But  you  fly  with  an  exhilarating  assurance  that  you 
cannot  possibly  run  over  anything  or  run  into  any- 
thing— except  the  land  or  the  sea,  and  even  those 
large  essentials  seem  a  beautifully  safe  distance  away. 

I  had  heard  a  great  deal  of  talk  about  the  deafening 

13 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

uproar  of  the  engine.  I  counted  a  headache  among 
my  chances.  There  again  reason  reinforced  con- 
jecture. When  in  the  early  morning  Mr.  Travers 
came  from  Brighton  in  this  Farman  in  which  I  flew 
I  could  hear  the  hum  of  the  great  insect  when  it  still 
seemed  abreast  of  Beachy  Head,  and  a  good  two 
miles  away.  If  one  can  hear  a  thing  at  two  miles, 
how  much  the  more  will  one  not  hear  it  at  a  distance 
of  two  yards?  But  at  the  risk  of  seeming  too  con- 
tented for  anything  I  will  assert  I  heard  that  noise 
no  more  than  one  hears  the  drone  of  an  electric 
ventilator  upon  one's  table.  It  was  only  when  I 
came  to  speak  to  Mr.  Grahame- White,  or  he  to  me, 
that  I  discovered  that  our  voices  had  become  almost 
infinitesimally  small. 

And  so  it  was  I  went  up  into  the  air  at  Eastbourne 
with  the  impression  that  flying  was  still  an  uncom- 
fortable, experimental,  and  slightly  heroic  thing  to 
do,  and  came  down  to  the  cheerful  gathering  crowd 
upon  the  sands  again  with  the  knowledge  that  it  is 
a  thing  achieved  for  everyone.  It  will  get  much 
cheaper,  no  doubt,  and  much  swifter,  and  be  im- 
proved in  a  dozen  ways — we  must  get  self-starting 
engines,  for  example,  for  both  our  aeroplanes  and 
motor-cars — but  it  is  available  to-day  for  anyone 
who  can  reach  it,  An  invalid  lady  of  seventy  could 
have  enjoyed  all  that  I  did  if  only  one  could  have  got 
her  into  the  passenger's  seat.  Getting  there  was  a 
little  difficult,  it  is  true;  the  waterplane  was  out  in 
the  surf,  and  I  was  carried  to  it  on  a  boatman's  back, 

14 


MY  FIRST  FLIGHT 

and  then  had  to  clamber  carefully  through  the  wires, 
but  that  is  a  matter  of  detail.  This  flying  is  indeed 
so  certain  to  become  a  general  experience  that  I  am 
sure  that  this  description  will  in  a  few  years  seem 
almost  as  quaint  as  if  I  had  set  myself  to  record  the 
fears  and  sensations  of  my  First  Ride  in  a  Wheeled 
Vehicle.  And  I  suspect  that  learning  to  control  a 
Farman  waterplane  now  is  probably  not  much  more 
difficult  than,  let  us  say,  twice  the  difficulty  in 
learning  the  control  and  management  of  a  motor- 
bicycle.  I  cannot  understand  the  sort  of  young  man 
who  won't  learn  how  to  do  it  if  he  gets  half  a  chance. 
The  development  of  these  waterplanes  is  an  im- 
portant step  towards  the  huge  and  swarming  popu- 
larisation of  flying  which  is  now  certainly  imminent. 
We  ancient  survivors  of  those  who  believed  in  and 
wrote  about  flying  before  there  was  any  flying  used 
to  make  a  great  fuss  about  the  dangers  and  diffi- 
culties of  landing  and  getting  up.  We  wrote  with 
vast  gravity  about  "starting  rails"  and  "landing 
stages,"  and  it  is  still  true  that  landing  an  aeroplane, 
except  upon  a  well-known  and  quite  level  expanse,  is 
a  risky  and  uncomfortable  business.  But  getting 
up  and  landing  upon  fairly  smooth  water  is  easier 
than  getting  into  bed.  This  alone  is  likely  to  deter- 
mine the  aeroplane  routes  along  the  line  of  the 
world's  coast-lines  and  lake  groups  and  waterways. 
The  airmen  will  go  to  and  fro  over  water  as  the 
midges  do.  Wherever  there  is  a  square  mile  of  water 
the  waterplanes  will  come  and  go  like  hornets  at  the 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

mouth  of  their  nest.  But  there  are  much  stronger 
reasons  than  this  convenience  for  keeping  over  wa- 
ter. Over  water  the  air,  it  seems,  lies  in  great  level 
expanses;  even  when  there  are  gales  it  moves  in 
uniform  masses  like  the  swift,  still  rush  of  a  deep 
river.  The  airman,  in  Mr.  Grahame- White's  phrase, 
can  go  to  sleep  on  it.  But  over  the  land,  and  for 
thousands  of  feet  up  into  the  sky,  the  air  is  more 
irregular  than  a  torrent  among  rocks;  it  is — if  only 
we  could  see  it — a  waving,  whirling,  eddying,  flam- 
boyant confusion.  A  slight  hill,  a  ploughed  field, 
the  streets  of  a  town,  create  riotous,  rolling,  invisible 
streams  and  cataracts  of  air  that  catch  the  airman 
unawares,  make  him  drop  disconcertingly,  try  his 
nerves.  With  a  powerful  enough  engine  he  climbs 
at  once  again,  but  these  sudden  downfalls  are  the 
least  pleasant  and  most  dangerous  experience  in 
aviation.  They  exact  a  tiring  vigilance. 

Over  lake  or  sea,  in  sunshine,  within  sight  of  land, 
this  is  the  perfect  way  of  the  flying  tourist.  Gladly 
would  I  have  set  out  for  France  this  morning  instead 
of  returning  to  Eastbourne.  And  then  coasted  round 
to  Spain  and  into  the  Mediterranean.  And  so  by 
leisurely  stages  to  India.  And  the  East  Indies.  .  .  . 

I  find  my  study  unattractive  to-day. 


OFF  THE  CHAIN 
(December,  1910) 

I  WAS  ill  in  bed,  reading  Samuel  Warren's  Ten 
Thousand  a  Year,  and  noting  how  much  the  world 
can  change  in  seventy  years. 

I  had  just  got  to  the  journey  of  Titmouse  from 
London  to  Yorkshire  in  that  ex-sheriff's  coach  he 
bought  in  Long  Acre — where  now  the  motor-cars  are 
sold — when  there  came  a  telegram  to  bid  me  note 
how  a  certain  Mr.  Holt  was  upon  the  ocean,  coming 
back  to  England  from  a  little  excursion.  He  had 
left  London  last  Saturday  week  midday;  he  hoped 
to  be  back  by  Thursday;  and  he  had  talked  to  the 
President  in  Washington,  visited  Philadelphia,  and 
had  a  comparatively  loitering  afternoon  in  New  York. 
What  had  I  to  say  about  it? 

Firstly,  that  I  wish  this  article  could  be  written 
by  Samuel  Warren.  And  failing  that,  I  wish  that 
Charles  Dickens,  who  wrote  in  his  "American  Notes  " 
with  such  passionate  disgust  and  hostility  about  the 
first  Cunarder,  retailing  all  the  discomfort  and  misery 
of  crossing  the  Atlantic  by  steamship,  could  have 
shared  Mr.  Holt's  experience. 

Because  I  am  chiefly  impressed  by  the  fact  not 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

that  Mr.  Holt  has  taken  days  where  weeks  were 
needed  fifty  years  ago,  but  that  he  has  done  it  very 
comfortably,  without  undue  physical  exertion,  and 
at  no  greater  expense,  I  suppose,  than  it  cost  Dickens, 
whom  the  journey  nearly  killed. 

If  Mr.  Holt's  expenses  were  higher,  it  was  for 
the  special  trains  and  the  sake  of  the  record.  Any- 
one taking  ordinary  trains  and  ordinary  passages 
may  do  what  he  has  done  in  eighteen  or  twenty 
days. 

When  I  was  a  boy,  Around  the  World  in  Eighty 
Days  was  still  a  brilliant  piece  of  imaginative 
fiction.  Now  that  is  almost  an  invalid's  pace.  It 
will  not  be  very  long  before  a  man  will  be  able  to 
go  round  the  world  if  he  wishes  to  do  so  ten  times 
in  a  year.  And  it  is  perhaps  forgivable  if  those  who, 
like  Jules  Verne,  saw  all  these  increments  in  speed, 
motor-cars,  and  airships,  aeroplanes,  and  submarines, 
wireless  telegraphy  and  what  not,  as  plain  and 
necessary  deductions  from  the  promises  of  physical 
science,  should  turn  upon  a  world  that  read  and 
doubted  and  jeered  with  "I  told  you  so.  Now  will 
you  respect  a  prophet?" 

It  was  not  that  the  prophets  professed  any  mystical 
and  inexplicable  illumination  at  which  a  sceptic 
might  reasonably  mock;  they  were  prepared  with 
ample  reasons  for  the  things  they  foretold.  Now, 
quite  as  confidently,  they  point  on  to  a  new  series 
of  consequences,  high  probabilities  that  follow  on  all 
this  tremendous  development  of  swift,  secure,  and 


OFF  THE  CHAIN 

cheapened  locomotion,  just  as  they  followed  almost 
necessarily  upon  the  mechanical  developments  of  the 
last  century. 

Briefly,  the  ties  that  bind  men  to  place  are  being 
severed;  we  are  in  the  beginning  of  a  new  phase  in 
human  experience. 

For  endless  ages  man  led  the  hunting  life,  mi- 
grating after  his  food,  camping,  homeless,  as  to  this 
day  are  many  of  the  Indians  and  Esquimaux  in  the 
Hudson  Bay  Territory.  Then  began  agriculture,  and 
for  the  sake  of  securer  food  man  tethered  himself 
to  a  place.  The  history  of  man's  progress  from 
savagery  to  civilisation  is  essentially  a  story  of 
settling  down.  It  begins  in  caves  and  shelters;  it 
culminates  in  a  wide  spectacle  of  farms  and  peasant 
villages,  and  little  towns  among  the  farms.  There 
were  wars,  crusades,  barbarous  invasions,  set-backs, 
but  to  that  state  all  Asia,  Europe,  North  Africa 
worked  its  way  with  an  indomitable  pertinacity. 
The  enormous  majority  of  human  beings  stayed  at 
home  at  last;  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave  they  lived, 
married,  died  in  the  same  district,  usually  in  the 
same  village;  and  to  that  condition,  law,  custom, 
habits,  morals  have  adapted  themselves.  The 
whole  plan  and  conception  of  human  society  is  based 
on  the  rustic  home  and  the  needs  and  characteristics 
of  the  agricultural  family.  There  have  been  gipsies, 
wanderers,  knaves,  knights-errant,  and  adventurers, 
no  doubt,  but  the  settled  permanent  rustic  home  and 
the  tenure  of  land  about  it,  and  the  hens  and  the 

19 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

cow,  have  constituted  the  fundamental  reality  of  the 
whole  scene. 

Now,  the  really  wonderful  thing  in  this  astonishing 
development  of  cheap,  abundant,  swift  locomotion 
we  have  seen  in  the  last  seventy  years — in  the 
development  of  which  Mauretanias,  aeroplanes,  mile- 
a-minute  expresses,  tubes,  motor-buses  and  motor- 
cars are  just  the  bright,  remarkable  points — is  this: 
that  it  dissolves  almost  all  the  reason  and  necessity 
why  men  should  go  on  living  permanently  in  any  one 
place  or  rigidly  disciplined  to  one  set  of  conditions. 
The  former  attachment  to  the  soil  ceases  to  be  an 
advantage.  The  human  spirit  has  never  quite  sub- 
dued itself  to  the  laborious  and  established  life;  it 
achieves  its  best  with  variety  and  occasional  vigorous 
exertion  under  the  stimulus  of  novelty  rather  than 
by  constant  toil,  and  this  revolution  in  human  loco- 
motion that  brings  nearly  all  the  globe  within  a  few 
days  of  any  man  is  the  most  striking  aspect  of  the 
unfettering  again  of  the  old  restless,  wandering, 
adventurous  tendencies  in  man's  composition. 

Already  one  can  note  remarkable  developments  of 
migration.  There  is,  for  example,  that  flow  to  and  fro 
across  the  Atlantic  of  labourers  from  the  Medi- 
terranean. Italian  workmen  by  the  hundred  thou- 
sand go  to  the  United  States  in  the  spring  and  return 
in  the  autumn.  Again,  there  is  a  stream  of  thou- 
sands of  properous  Americans  to  summer  in  Europe. 
Compared  with  any  European  country,  the  whole 
population  of  the  United  States  is  fluid.  Equally 

20 


OFF  THE  CHAIN 

notable  is  the  enormous  proportion  of  the  British 
prosperous  which  winters  either  in  the  high  Alps  or 
along  the  Riviera.  England  is  rapidly  developing 
the  former  Irish  grievance  of  an  absentee  propertied 
class.  It  is  only  now  by  the  most  strenuous  artificial 
banking  back  that  migrations  on  a  far  huger  scale 
from  India  into  Africa,  and  from  China  and  Japan 
into  Australia  and  America,  are  prevented. 

All  the  indications  point  to  a  time  when  it  will  be 
an  altogether  exceptional  thing  for  a  man  to  follow 
one  occupation  in  one  place  all  his  life,  and  still  rarer 
for  a  son  to  follow  in  his  father's  footsteps  or  die  in 
his  father's  house. 

The  thing  is  as  simple  as  the  rule  of  three.  We 
are  off  the  chain  of  locality  for  good  and  all.  It  was 
necessary  heretofore  for  a  man  to  live  in  immediate 
contact  with  his  occupation,  because  the  only  way  for 
him  to  reach  it  was  to  have  it  at  his  door,  and  the 
cost  and  delay  of  transport  were  relatively  too  enor- 
mous for  him  to  shift  once  he  was  settled.  Now  he 
may  live  twenty  or  thirty  miles  away  from  his  occu- 
pation; and  it  often  pays  him  to  spend  the  small 
amount  of  time  and  money  needed  to  move — it  may 
be  half-way  round  the  world — to  healthier  conditions 
or  more  profitable  employment. 

And  with  every  diminution  in  the  cost  and  dura- 
tion of  transport  it  becomes  more  and  more  possible, 
and  more  and  more  likely,  to  be  profitable  to  move 
great  multitudes  of  workers  seasonally  between  re- 
gions where  work  is  needed  in  this  season  and  re- 

3  3I 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

gions  where  work  is  needed  in  that.  They  can  go 
out  to  the  agricultural  lands  at  one  time  and  come 
back  into  towns  for  artistic  work  and  organised  work 
in  factories  at  another.  They  can  move  from  rain 
and  darkness  into  sunshine,  and  from  heat  into  the 
coolness  of  mountain  forests.  Children  can  be  sent 
for  education  to  sea  beaches  and  healthy  mountains. 

Men  will  harvest  in  Saskatchewan  and  come  down 
in  great  liners  to  spend  the  winter  working  in  the 
forests  of  Yucatan. 

People  have  hardly  begun  to  speculate  about 
the  consequences  of  the  return  of  humanity  from  a 
closely  tethered  to  a  migratory  existence.  It  is  here 
that  the  prophet  finds  his  chief  opportunity.  Obvi- 
ously, these  great  forces  of  transport  are  already 
straining  against  the  limits  of  existing  political 
areas.  Every  country  contains  now  an  increasing 
ingredient  of  unenfranchised  Uitlanders.  Every 
country  finds  a  growing  section  of  its  home-born 
people  living  largely  abroad,  drawing  the  bulk  of 
their  income  from  the  exterior,  and  having  their 
essential  interests  wholly  or  partially  across  the 
frontier. 

In  every  locality  of  a  Western  European  country 
countless  people  are  found  delocalised,  uninterested 
in  the  affairs  of  that  particular  locality,  and  capable 
of  moving  themselves  with  a  minimum  of  loss  and  a 
maximum  of  facility  into  any  other  region  that 
proves  more  attractive.  In  America  political  life, 
especially  State  life  as  distinguished  from  national 

22 


OFF  THE  CHAIN 

political  life,  is  degraded  because  of  the  natural  and 
inevitable  apathy  of  a  large  portion  of  the  population 
whose  interests  go  beyond  the  State. 

Politicians  and  statesmen,  being  the  last  people 
in  the  world  to  notice  what  is  going  on  in  it,  are 
making  no  attempt  whatever  to  readapt  this  hugely 
growing  floating  population  of  delocalised  people  to 
the  public  service.  As  Mr.  Marriott  puts  it  in  his 
novel,  "Now,"  they  "drop  out"  from  politics  as  we 
understand  politics  at  present.  Local  administra- 
tion falls  almost  entirely — and  the  decision  of  Im- 
perial affairs  tends  more  and  more  to  fall — into  the 
hands  of  that  dwindling  and  adventurous  moiety 
which  sits  tight  in  one  place  from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave.  No  one  has  yet  invented  any  method  for 
the  political  expression  and  collective  direction  of  a 
migratory  population,  and  nobody  is  attempting  to 
do  so.  It  is  a  new  problem.  .  .  . 

Here,  then,  is  a  curious  prospect,  the  prospect  of 
a  new  kind  of  people,  a  floating  population  going 
about  the  world,  uprooted,  delocalised,  and  even,  it 
may  be,  denationalised,  with  wide  interests  and  wide 
views,  developing,  no  doubt,  customs  and  habits  of 
its  own,  a  morality  of  its  own,  a  philosophy  of  its 
own,  and  yet,  from  the  point  of  view  of  current 
politics  and  legislation,  unorganised  and  ineffective. 

Most  of  the  forces  of  international  finance  and 
international  business  enterprise  will  be  with  it.  It 
will  develop  its  own  characteristic  standards  of  art 
and  literature  and  conduct  in  accordance  with  its 

23 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

new  necessities.  It  is,  I  believe,  the  mankind  of  the 
future.  And  the  last  thing  it  will  be  able  to  do  will 
be  to  legislate.  The  history  of  the  immediate  future 
will,  I  am  convinced,  be  very  largely  the  history  of 
the  conflict  of  the  needs  of  this  new  population  with 
the  institutions,  the  boundaries,  the  laws,  prejudices, 
and  deep-rooted  traditions  established  during  the 
home-keeping,  localised  era  of  mankind's  career. 

This  conflict  follows  as  inevitably  upon  these  new 
gigantic  facilities  of  locomotion  as  the  Mauretania 
followed  upon  the  discoveries  of  steam  and  steel. 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

(June, 


THE  bunting  and  the  crimson  vanish  from  the 
streets.  Already  the  vast  army  of  improvised  carpen- 
ters that  the  Coronation  has  created  set  themselves 
to  the  work  of  demolition,  and  soon  every  road  that 
converges  upon  Central  London  will  be  choked  again 
with  great  loads  of  timber  —  but  this  time  going  out- 
ward —  as  our  capital  emerges  from  this  unprece- 
dented inundation  of  loyalty.  The  most  elaborately 
conceived,  the  most  stately  of  all  recorded  British 
Coronations  is  past. 

What  new  phase  in  the  life  of  our  nation  and  our 
Empire  does  this  tremendous  ceremony  inaugurate? 
The  question  is  inevitable.  There  is  nothing  in  all 
the  social  existence  of  men  so  full  of  challenge  as  the 
crowning  of  a  King.  It  is  the  end  of  the  overture  ; 
the  curtain  rises.  This  is  a  new  beginning-place  for 
histories. 

To  us,  the  great  mass  of  common  Englishmen,  who 
have  no  place  in  the  hierarchy  of  our  land,  who  do 
not  attend  Courts  nor  encounter  uniforms,  whose 
function  is  at  most  spectacular,  who  stand  in  the 
street  and  watch  the  dignitaries  and  the  liveries  pass 
by,  this  sense  of  critical  expectation  is  perhaps 

25 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

greater  than  it  is  for  those  more  immediately  con- 
cerned in  the  spectacle.  They  have  had  their  parts 
to  play,  their  symbolic  acts  to  perform,  they  have 
sat  in  their  privileged  places,  and  we  have  waited 
at  the  barriers  until  their  comfort  and  dignity  were 
assured.  I  can  conceive  many  of  them,  a  little  fa- 
tigued, preparing  now  for  social  dispersal,  relaxing 
comfortably  into  gossip,  discussing  the  detail  of  these 
events  with  an  air  of  things  accomplished.  They 
will  decide  whether  the  Coronation  has  been  a  success 
and  whether  everything  has  or  has  not  passed  off 
very  well.  For  us  in  the  great  crowd  nothing  has  as 
yet  succeeded  or  passed  off  well  or  ill.  We  are  intent 
upon  a  King  newly  anointed  and  crowned,  a  King 
of  whom  we  know  as  yet  very  little,  but  who  has, 
nevertheless,  roused  such  expectation  as  no  King 
before  him  has  done  since  Tudor  times,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  gigantic  opportunities. 

There  is  a  conviction  widespread  among  us — his 
own  words,  perhaps,  have  done  most  to  create  it — 
that  King  George  is  inspired,  as  no  recent  predecessor 
has  been  inspired,  by  the  conception  of  kingship,  that 
his  is  to  be  no  r61e  of  almost  indifferent  abstinence 
from  the  broad  processes  of  our  national  and  imperial 
development.  That  greater  public  life  which  is 
above  party  and  above  creed  and  sect  has,  we  are 
told,  taken  hold  of  his  imagination;  he  is  to  be  no 
crowned  image  of  unity  and  correlation,  a  layer  of 
foundation-stones  and  a  signature  to  documents,  but 
an  actor  in  our  drama,  a  living  Prince. 

26 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

Time  will  test  these  hopes,  but  certainly  we,  the 
innumerable  democracy  of  individually  unimportant 
men,  have  felt  the  need  for  such  a  Prince.  Our 
consciousness  of  defects,  of  fields  of  effort  untilled, 
of  vast  possibilities  neglected  and  slipping  away  from 
us  for  ever,  has  never  really  slumbered  again  since 
the  chastening  experiences  of  the  Boer  war.  Since 
then  the  national  spirit,  hampered  though  it  is  by 
the  traditions  of  party  government  and  a  legacy  of 
intellectual  and  social  heaviness,  has  been  in  uneasy 
and  ineffectual  revolt  against  deadness,  against  stu- 
pidity and  slackness,  against  waste  and  hypocrisy 
in  every  department  of  life.  We  have  come  to  see 
more  and  more  clearly  how  little  we  can  hope  for 
from  politicians,  societies,  and  organised  movements 
in  these  essential  things.  It  is  this  that  has  invested 
the  energy  and  manhood,  the  untried  possibilities,  of 
the  new  King  with  so  radiant  a  light  of  hope  for  us. 

Think  what  it  may  mean  for  us  all — I  write  as  one 
of  that  great  ill-informed  multitude,  sincerely  and 
gravely  patriotic,  outside  the  echoes  of  Court  gossip 
and  the  easy  knowledge  of  exalted  society — if  our 
King  does  indeed  care  for  these  wider  and  pro- 
founder  things!  Suppose  we  have  a  King  at  last 
who  cares  for  the  advancement  of  science,  who  is 
willing  to  do  the  hundred  things  that  are  so  easy  in 
his  position  to  increase  research,  to  honour  and  to 
share  in  scientific  thought.  Suppose  we  have  a  King 
whose  head  rises  above  the  level  of  the  Court  artist, 
and  who  not  only  can  but  will  appeal  to  the  latent 

27 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  discouraged  power  of  artistic  creation  in  our  race. 
Suppose  we  have  a  King  who  understands  the  need 
for  incessant,  acute  criticism  to  keep  our  collective 
activities  intelligent  and  efficient,  and  for  a  flow  of 
bold,  unhampered  thought  through  every  department 
of  the  national  life,  a  King  liberal  without  laxity  and 
patriotic  without  pettiness  or  vulgarity.  Such,  it 
seems  to  us  who  wait  at  present  almost  inexpressively 
outside  the  immediate  clamours  of  a  mere  artificial 
loyalty,  are  the  splendid  possibilities  of  the  time. 

For  England  is  no  exhausted  or  decaying  country. 
It  is  rich  with  an  unmeasured  capacity  for  generous 
responses.  It  is  a  country  burthened  indeed,  but 
not  overwhelmed,  by  the  gigantic  responsibilities  of 
Empire,  a  little  relaxed  by  wealth,  and  hampered 
rather  than  enslaved  by  a  certain  shyness  of  tem- 
perament, a  certain  habitual  timidity,  slovenliness 
and  insincerity  of  mind.  It  is  a  little  distrustful  of 
intellectual  power  and  enterprise,  a  little  awkward 
and  ungracious  to  brave  and  beautiful  things,  a  little 
too  tolerant  of  dull,  well-meaning  and  industrious 
men  and  arrogant  old  women.  It  suffers  hypocrites 
gladly,  because  its  criticism  is  poor,  and  it  is  waste- 
fully  harsh  to  frank  unorthodoxy.  But  its  heart  is 
sound  if  its  judgments  fall  short  of  acuteness  and  if 
its  standards  of  achievement  are  low.  It  needs  but 
a  quickening  spirit  upon  the  throne,  always  the  tradi- 
tional centre  of  its  respect,  to  rise  from  even  the 
appearance  of  decadence.  There  is  a  new  quality 
seeking  expression  in  England  like  the  rising  of  sap 

28 


OF  THE   NEW  REIGN 

in  the  spring,  a  new  generation  asking  only  for  such 
leadership  and  such  emancipation  from  restricted 
scope  and  ungenerous  hostility  as  a  King  alone  can 
give  it.  ... 

When  in  its  turn  this  latest  reign  comes  at  last  to 
its  reckoning,  what  will  the  sum  of  its  achievement 
be?  What  will  it  leave  of  things  visible?  Will  it 
leave  a  London  preserved  and  beautified,  or  will 
it  but  add  abundantly  to  the  lumps  of  dishonest 
statuary,  the  scars  and  masses  of  ill-conceived  re- 
building which  testify  to  the  aesthetic  degradation  of 
the  Victorian  period?  Will  a  great  constellation  of 
artists  redeem  the  ambitious  sentimentalities  and 
genteel  skilfulness  that  find  their  fitting  mausoleum 
in  the  Tate  Gallery?  Will  our  literature  escape  at 
last  from  pretentiousness  and  timidity,  our  phi- 
losophy from  the  foolish  cerebrations  of  university 
"characters"  and  eminent  politicians  at  leisure,  and 
our  starved  science  find  scope  and  resources  adequate 
to  its  gigantic  needs?  Will  our  universities,  our 
teaching,  our  national  training,  our  public  services, 
gain  a  new  health  from  the  reviving  vigour  of  the 
national  brain?  Or  is  all  this  a  mere  wild  hope,  and 
shall  we,  after  perhaps  some  small  flutterings  of 
effort,  the  foundation  of  some  ridiculous  little  acad- 
emy of  literary  busybodies  and  hangers-on,  the 
public  recognition  of  this  or  that  sociological  pre- 
tender or  financial  "scientist,"  and  a  little  polite 
jobbery  with  picture-buying,  relapse  into  lassitude 
and  a  contented  acquiescence  in  the  rivalry  of 

29 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Germany  and  the  United  States  for  the  moral,  intel- 
lectual, and  material  leadership  of  the  world? 

The  deaths  and  accessions  of  Kings,  the  changing 
of  names  and  coins  and  symbols  and  persons,  a  little 
force  our  minds  in  the  marking  off  of  epochs.  We 
are  brought  to  weigh  one  generation  against  another, 
to  reckon  up  our  position  and  note  the  characteristics 
of  a  new  phase.  What  lies  before  us  in  the  next 
decades?  Is  England  going  on  to  fresh  achieve- 
ments, to  a  renewed  and  increased  predominance, 
or  is  she  falling  into  a  secondary  position  among 
the  peoples  of  the  world? 

The  answer  to  that  depends  upon  ourselves.  Have 
we  pride  enough  to  attempt  still  to  lead  mankind, 
and  if  we  have,  have  we  the  wisdom  and  the  quality? 
Or  are  we  just  the  children  of  Good  Luck,  who  are 
being  found  out? 

Some  years  ago  our  present  King  exhorted  this 
island  to  "wake  up"  in  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
of  British  royal  utterances,  and  Mr.  Owen  Seaman 
assures  him  in  verse  of  an  altogether  laureate  quality 
that  we  are  now 

Free  of  the  snare  0f  slumber's  silken  bands, 

though  I  have  not  myself  observed  it.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  ask,  Is  England  really  waking  up?  and  if 
she  is,  what  sort  of  awakening  is  she  likely  to  have? 
It  is  possible,  of  course,  to  wake  up  in  various 
different  ways.  There  is  the  clear  and  beautiful 
dawn  of  new  and  balanced  effort,  easy,  unresting, 

30 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

planned,  assured,  and  there  is  also  the  blundering- 
up  of  a  still  half-somnolent  man,  irascible,  clumsy, 
quarrelsome,  who  stubs  his  toe  in  his  first  walk 
across  the  room,  smashes  his  too  persistent  alarum 
clock  in  a  fit  of  nerves,  and  cuts  his  throat  while 
shaving.  All  patriotic  vehemence  does  not  serve 
one's  country.  Exertion  is  a  more  critical  and  dan- 
gerous thing  than  inaction,  and  the  essence  of  suc- 
cess is  in  the  ability  to  develop  those  qualities  which 
make  action  effective,  and  without  which  strenuous- 
ness  is  merely  a  clumsy  and  noisy  protest  against 
inevitable  defeat.  These  necessary  qualities,  with- 
out which  no  community  may  hope  for  pre-eminence 
to-day,  are  a  passion  for  fine  and  brilliant  achieve- 
ment, relentless  veracity  of  thought  and  method,  and 
richly  imaginative  fearlessness  of  enterprise.  Have 
we  English  those  qualities,  and  are  we  doing  our 
utmost  to  select  and  develop  them? 

I  doubt  very  much  if  we  are.  Let  me  give  some 
of  the  impressions  that  qualify  my  assurance  in  the 
future  of  our  race. 

I  have  watched  a  great  deal  of  patriotic  effort 
during  the  last  decade,  I  have  seen  enormous  ex- 
penditures of  will,  emotion  and  material  for  the  sake 
of  our  future,  and  I  am  deeply  impressed,  not  indeed 
by  any  effect  of  lethargy,  but  by  the  second-rate 
quality  and  the  shortness  and  weakness  of  aim  in 
very  much  that  has  been  done.  I  miss  continually 
that  sharply  critical  imaginativeness  which  dis- 
tinguishes all  excellent  work,  which  shines  out  su- 

31 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

premely  in  Cromwell's  creation  of  the  New  Model, 
or  Nelson's  plan  of  action  at  Trafalgar,  as  brightly 
as  it  does  in  Newton's  investigation  of  gravitation, 
Turner's  rendering  of  landscape,  or  Shakespeare's 
choice  of  words,  but  which  cannot  be  absent  alto- 
gether if  any  achievement  is  to  endure.  We  seem 
to  have  busy,  energetic  people,  no  doubt,  in  abun- 
dance, patient  and  industrious  administrators  and 
legislators ;  but  have  we  any  adequate  supply  of  really 
creative  ability? 

Let  me  apply  this  question  to  one  matter  upon 
which  England  has  certainly  been  profoundly  in 
earnest  during  the  last  decade.  We  have  been  almost 
frantically  resolved  to  keep  the  empire  of  the  sea. 
But  have  we  really  done  all  that  could  have  been 
done?  I  ask  it  with  all  diffidence,  but  has  our  naval 
preparation  been  free  from  a  sort  of  noisy  violence, 
a  certain  massive  dullness  of  conception?  Have  we 
really  made  anything  like  a  sane  use  of  our  resources  ? 
I  do  not  mean  of  our  resources  in  money  or  stuff. 
It  is  manifest  that  the  next  naval  war  will  be  beyond 
all  precedent  a  war  of  mechanisms  giving  such  scope 
for  invention  and  scientifically  equipped  wit  and 
courage  as  the  world  has  never  had  before.  Now, 
have  we  really  developed  any  considerable  propor- 
tion of  the  potential  human  quality  available  to 
meet  the  demand  for  wits?  What  are  we  doing  to 
discover,  encourage  and  develop  those  supreme 
qualities  of  personal  genius  that  become  more  and 
more  decisive  with  every  new  weapon  and  every  new 

32 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

complication  and  unsuspected  possibility  it  intro- 
duces? Suppose,  for  example,  there  was  among  us 
to-day  a  one-eyed,  one-armed  adulterer,  rather 
fragile,  prone  to  sea-sickness,  and  with  just  that  one 
supreme  quality  of  imaginative  courage  which  made 
Nelson  our  starry  admiral.  Would  he  be  given  the 
ghost  of  a  chance  now  of  putting  that  gift  at  his 
country's  disposal?  I  do  not  think  he  would,  and  I 
do  not  think  he  would  because  we  underrate  gifts  and 
exceptional  qualities,  because  there  is  no  quickening 
appreciation  for  the  exceptional  best  in  a  man,  and 
because  we  overvalue  the  good  behaviour,  the  sound 
physique,  the  commonplace  virtues  of  mediocrity. 

I  have  but  the  knowledge  of  the  man  in  the  street 
in  these  things,  though  once  or  twice  I  have  chanced 
on  prophecy,  and  I  am  uneasily  apprehensive  of  the 
quality  of  all  our  naval  preparations.  We  go  on 
launching  these  lumping  great  Dreadnoughts,  and  I 
cannot  bring  myself  to  believe  in  them.  They  seem 
vulnerable  from  the  air  above  and  the  deep  below, 
vulnerable  in  a  shallow  channel  and  in  a  fog  (and 
the  North  Sea  is  both  foggy  and  shallow),  and  im- 
mensely costly.  If  I  were  Lord  High  Admiral  of 
England  at  war  I  would  not  fight  the  things.  I 
would  as  soon  put  to  sea  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 
If  I  were  fighting  Germany,  I  would  stow  half  of 
them  away  in  the  Clyde  and  half  in  the  Bristol 
Channel,  and  take  the  good  men  out  of  them  and 
fight  with  mines  and  torpedoes  and  destroyers  and 
airships  and  submarines. 

33 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  when  I  come  to  military  matters  my  per- 
suasion that  things  are  not  all  right,  that  our  current 
hostility  to  imaginative  activity  and  our  dull  accept- 
ance of  established  methods  and  traditions  is  leading 
us  towards  grave  dangers,  intensifies.  In  South 
Africa  the  Boers  taught  us  in  blood  and  bitterness  the 
obvious  fact  that  barbed  wire  had  its  military  uses, 
and  over  the  high  passes  on  the  way  to  Lhassa 
(though,  luckily,  it  led  to  no  disaster)  there  was  not 
a  rifle  in  condition  to  use  because  we  had  not  thought 
to  take  glycerine.  The  perpetual  novelty  of  modern 
conditions  demands  an  imaginative  alertness  we 
eliminate.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  Army  Council 
or  anyone  in  authority  has  worked  out  a  tithe  of  the 
essential  problems  of  contemporary  war.  t  If  they 
have,  then  it  does  not  show.  Our  military  imagina- 
tion is  half-way  back  to  bows  and  arrows.  The  other 
day  I  saw  a  detachment  of  the  Legion  of  Frontiers- 
men disporting  itself  at  Totteridge.  I  presume  these 
young  heroes  consider  they  are  preparing  for  a  possi- 
ble conflict  in  England  or  Western  Europe,  and  I 
presume  the  authorities  are  satisfied  with  them.  It 
is  at  any  rate  the  only  serious  war  of  which  there  is 
any  manifest  probability.  Western  Europe  is  now 
a  network  of  railways,  tramways,  highroads,  wires 
of  all  sorts;  its  chief  beasts  of  burthen  are  the  railway 
train  and  the  motor-car  and  the  bicycle;  towns  and 
hypertrophied  villages  are  often  practically  continu- 
ous over  large  areas;  there  is  abundant  water  and 
food,  and  the  commonest  form  of  cover  is  the  house. 

34 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

But  the  Legion  of  Frontiersmen  is  equipped  for  war, 
oh! — in  Arizona  in  1890,  and  so  far  as  I  am  able  to 
judge  the  most  modern  sections  of  the  army  extant 
are  organised  for  a  colonial  war  in  (say)  1899  or 
1900.  There  is,  of  course,  a  considerable  amount  of 
vague  energy  demanding  conscription  and  urging  our 
youth  towards  a  familiarity  with  arms  and  the  back- 
woodsman's life,  but  of  any  thought-out  purpose  in 
our  arming  widely  understood,  of  any  realisation  of 
what  would  have  to  be  done  and  where  it  would  have 
to  be  done,  and  of  any  attempts  to  create  an  instru- 
ment for  that  novel  unprecedented  undertaking,  I 
discover  no  trace. 

In  my  capacity  of  devil's  advocate  pleading 
against  national  overconfidence,  I  might  go  on  to  the 
quality  of  our  social  and  political  movements.  One 
hears  nowadays  a  vast  amount  of  chatter  about 
efficiency — that  magic  word — and  social  organisation, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  a  huge  expenditure  of  energy 
upon  these  things  and  a  widespread  desire  to  rush 
about  and  make  showy  and  startling  changes.  But 
it  does  not  follow  that  this  involves  progress  if  the 
enterprise  itself  is  dully  conceived,  and  most  of  it 
does  seem  to  me  to  be  dully  conceived.  In  the  ab- 
sence of  penetrating  criticism,  any  impudent  indus- 
trious person  may  set  up  as  an  "expert,"  organise 
and  direct  the  confused  good  intentions  at  large,  and 
muddle  disastrously  with  the  problem  in  hand.  The 
"expert"  quack  and  the  bureaucratic  intriguer  in- 
crease and  multiply  in  a  dull-minded,  uncritical, 

35 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

strenuous  period  as  disease  germs  multiply  in  dark- 
ness and  heat. 

I  find  the  same  doubts  of  our  quality  assail  me 
when  I  turn  to  the  supreme  business  of  education. 
It  is  true  we  all  seem  alive  nowadays  to  the  need  of 
education,  are  all  prepared  for  more  expenditure  upon 
it  and  more,  but  it  does  not  follow  necessarily  in  a 
period  of  stagnating  imagination  that  we  shall  get 
what  we  pay  for.  The  other  day  I  discovered  my 
little  boy  doing  a  subtraction  sum,  and  I  found  he 
was  doing  it  in  a  slower,  clumsier,  less  businesslike 
way  than  the  one  I  was  taught  in  an  old-fashioned 
' '  Commercial  Academy  "  thirty  odd  years  ago.  The 
educational  "expert,"  it  seems,  has  been  at  work 
substituting  a  bad  method  for  a  good  one  in  our 
schools  because  it  is  easier  of  exposition.  The  educa- 
tional "expert,"  in  the  lack  of  a  lively  public  intelli- 
gence, develops  all  the  vices  of  the  second-rate  en- 
ergetic, and  he  is,  I  am  only  too  disposed  to  believe, 
making  a  terrible  mess  of  a  great  deal  of  our  science 
teaching  and  of  the  teaching  of  mathematics  and 
English.  ... 

I  have  written  enough  to  make  clear  the  quality 
of  my  doubts.  I  think  the  English  mind  cuts  at  life 
with  a  dulled  edge,  and  that  its  energy  may  be  worse 
than  its  somnolence.  I  think  it  undervalues  gifts  and 
fine  achievement,  and  overvalues  the  commonplace 
virtues  of  mediocre  men.  One  of  the  greatest  Liberal 
statesmen  in  the  time  of  Queen  Victoria  never  held 
office  because  he  was  associated  with  a  divorce  case 

36 


OF  THE  NEW  REIGN 

a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  For  him  to  have  taken 
office  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  scandal.  But 
it  is  not  regarded  as  a  scandal  that  our  Government 
includes  men  of  no  more  ability  than  any  average 
assistant  behind  a  grocer's  counter.  These  are  your 
gods,  O  England ! — and  with  every  desire  to  be  opti- 
mistic I  find  it  hard  under  the  circumstances  to 
anticipate  that  the  New  Epoch  is  likely  to  be  a 
blindingly  brilliant  time  for  our  Empire  and  our  race. 

4 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

WHAT  will  hold  such  an  Empire  as  the  British  to- 
gether, this  great,  laxly  scattered,  sea-linked  associa- 
tion of  ancient  states  and  new-formed  countries, 
Oriental  nations,  and  continental  colonies?  What 
will  enable  it  to  resist  the  endless  internal  strains,  the 
inevitable  external  pressures  and  attacks  to  which  it 
must  be  subjected?  This  is  the  primary  question 
for  British  Imperialism ;  everything  else  is  secondary 
or  subordinated  to  that. 

There  is  a  multitude  of  answers.  But  I  suppose 
most  of  them  will  prove  under  examination  either  to 
be,  or  to  lead  to,  or  to  imply  very  distinctly  this 
generalisation,  that  if  most  of  the  intelligent  and 
active  people  in  the  Empire  want  it  to  continue  it 
will,  and  that  if  a  large  proportion  of  such  active 
and  intelligent  people  are  discontented  and  estranged, 
nothing  can  save  it  from  disintegration.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  a  navy  ten  times  larger  than  ours,  or 
conscription  of  the  most  irksome  thoroughness,  could 
oblige  Canada  to  remain  in  the  Empire  if  the  general 
will  and  feeling  of  Canada  were  against  it,  or  coerce 
India  into  a  sustained  submission  if  India  presented 
a  united  and  resistent  front.  Our  Empire,  for  all 

38 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

its  roll  of  battles,  was  not  created  by  force;  colonisa- 
tion and  diplomacy  have  played  a  far  larger  share  in 
its  growth  than  conquest;  and  there  is  no  such 
strength  in  its  sovereignty  as  the  rule  of  pride  and 
pressure  demands.  It  is  to  the  free  consent  and 
participation  of  its  constituent  peoples  that  we  must 
look  for  its  continuance. 

A  large  and  influential  body  of  politicians  con- 
siders that  in  preferential  trading  between  the  parts 
of  the  Empire,  and  in  the  erection  of  a  tariff  wall 
against  exterior  peoples,  lies  the  secret  of  that 
deepened  emotional  understanding  we  all  desire.  I 
have  never  belonged  to  that  school.  I  am  no  im- 
passioned Free  Trader — the  sacred  principle  of  Free 
Trade  has  always  impressed  me  as  a  piece  of  party 
claptrap;  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  understand 
how  an  attempt  to  draw  together  dominions  so 
scattered  and  various  as  ours  by  a  network  of  fiscal 
manipulation  could  end  in  anything  but  mutual 
inconvenience,  mutual  irritation,  and  disruption. 

In  an  open  drawer  in  my  bureau  there  lies  before 
me  now  a  crumpled  card  on  which  are  the  notes  I 
made  of  a  former  discussion  of  this  very  issue,  a 
discussion  between  a  number  of  prominent  politicians 
in  the  days  before  Mr.  Chamberlain's  return  from 
South  Africa  and  the  adoption  of  Tariff  Reform  by 
the  Unionist  Party;  and  I  decipher  again  the  same 
considerations,  unanswered  and  unanswerable,  that 
leave  me  sceptical  to-day. 

Take  a  map  of  the  world  and  consider  the  extreme 

39 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

differences  in  position  and  condition  between  our 
scattered  states.  Here  is  Canada,  lying  along  the 
United  States,  looking  eastward  to  Japan  and  China, 
westward  to  all  Europe.  See  the  great  slashes  of 
lake,  bay,  and  mountain  chain  that  cut  it  merid- 
ionally.  Obviously  its  main  routes  and  trades  and 
relations  lie  naturally  north  and  south;  obviously  its 
full  development  can  only  be  attained  with  those 
ways  free,  open,  and  active.  Conceivably,  you  may 
build  a  fiscal  wall  across  the  continent;  conceivably, 
you  may  shut  off  the  east  and  half  the  west  by  im- 
possible tariffs,  and  narrow  its  trade  to  one  artificial 
duct  to  England,  but  only  at  the  price  of  a  hampered 
development.  It  will  be  like  nourishing  the  growing 
body  of  a  man  with  the  heart  and  arteries  of  a  mouse. 

Then  here,  again,  are  New  Zealand  and  Australia, 
facing  South  America  and  the  teeming  countries  of 
Eastern  Asia;  surely  it  is  in  relation  to  these  vast 
proximities  that  their  economic  future  lies.  Is  it 
possible  to  believe  that  shipping  mutton  to  London 
is  anything  but  the  mere  beginning  of  their  com- 
mercial development?  Look  at  India,  again,  and 
South  Africa.  Is  it  not  manifest  that  from  the  eco- 
nomic and  business  points  of  view  each  of  these  is 
an  entirely  separate  entity,  a  system  apart,  under 
distinct  necessities,  needing  entire  freedom  to  make 
its  own  bargains  and  control  its  trade  in  its  own  way 
in  order  to  achieve  its  fullest  material  possibilities? 

Nor  can  I  believe  that  financial  entanglements 
greatly  strengthen  the  bonds  of  an  empire  in  any 

40 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

case.  We  lost  the  American  colonies  because  we 
interfered  with  their  fiscal  arrangements,  and  it  was 
Napoleon's  attempt  to  strangle  the  continental  trade 
with  Great  Britain  that  began  his  downfall. 

I  do  not  find  in  the  ordinary  relations  of  life  that 
business  relations  necessarily  sustain  intercourse. 
The  relations  of  buyer  and  seller  are  ticklish  rela- 
tions, very  liable  to  strains  and  conflicts.  I  do  not 
find  people  grow  fond  of  their  butchers  and  plumb- 
ers, and  I  doubt  whether  if  one  were  obliged  by  some 
special  taxation  to  deal  only  with  one  butcher  or  one 
plumber,  it  would  greatly  endear  the  relationship. 
Forced  buying  is  irritated  buying,  and  it  is  the  for- 
bidden shop  that  contains  the  coveted  goods.  Nor 
do  I  find,  to  take  another  instance,  among  the  hotel 
staffs  of  Switzerland  and  the  Riviera — who  live 
almost  entirely  upon  British  gold — those  impassioned 
British  imperialist  views  the  economic  link  theory 
would  lead  me  to  expect. 

And  another  link,  too,  upon  which  much  stress  is 
laid  but  about  which  I  have  very  grave  doubts,  is 
the  possibility  of  a  unified  organisation  of  the  Empire 
for  military  defense.  We  are  to  have,  it  is  suggested, 
an  imperial  Army  and  an  imperial  Navy,  and  so  far, 
no  doubt,  as  the  guaranteeing  of  a  general  peace  goes, 
we  may  develop  a  sense  of  participation  in  that 
way.  But  it  is  well  in  these  islands  to  remember  that 
our  extraordinary  Empire  has  no  common  enemy  to 
weld  it  together  from  without. 

It  is  too  usual  to  regard  Germany  as  the  common 

41 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

enemy.  We  in  Great  Britain  are  now  intensely 
jealous  of  Germany.  We  are  intensely  jealous  of 
Germany  not  only  because  the  Germans  outnumber 
us,  and  have  a  much  larger  and  more  diversified 
country  than  ours,  and  lie  in  the  very  heart  and  body 
of  Europe,  but  because  in  the  last  hundred  years, 
while  we  have  fed  on  platitudes  and  vanity,  they  have 
had  the  energy  and  humility  to  develop  a  splendid 
system  of  national  education,  to  toil  at  science  and 
art  and  literature,  to  develop  social  organisation,  to 
master  and  better  our  methods  of  business  and 
industry,  and  to  clamber  above  us  in  the  scale  of 
civilisation.  This  has  humiliated  and  irritated  rather 
than  chastened  us,  and  our  irritation  has  been  great- 
ly exacerbated  by  the  swaggering  bad  manners,  the 
talk  of  "Blood  and  Iron  "  and  Mailed  Fists,  the  Welt- 
Politik  rubbish  that  inaugurated  the  new  German 
phrase. 

The  British  middle-class,  therefore,  is  full  of  an 
angry,  vague  disposition  to  thwart  that  expansion 
which  Germans  regard  very  reasonably  as  their 
natural  destiny;  there  are  all  the  possibilities  of  a 
huge  conflict  in  that  disposition,  and  it  is  perhaps 
well  to  remember  how  insular — or,  at  least,  how 
European — the  essentials  of  this  quarrel  are.  We 
have  lost  our  tempers,  but  Canada  has  not.  There 
is  nothing  in  Germany  to  make  Canada  envious  and 
ashamed  of  wasted  years.  Canada  has  no  natural 
quarrel  with  Germany,  nor  has  India,  nor  South 
Africa,  nor  Australasia.  They  have  no  reason  to 

42 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

share  our  insular  exasperation.  On  the  other  hand, 
all  these  states  have  other  special  preoccupations. 
New  Zealand,  for  example,  having  spent  half  a  cen- 
tury and  more  in  sheep-farming,  land  legislation,  sup- 
pressing its  drink  traffic,  lowering  its  birth-rate,  and, 
in  short,  the  achievement  of  an  ideal  preventive 
materialism,  is  chiefly  consumed  by  hate  and  fear  of 
Japan,  which  in  the  same  interval  has  made  a  stride 
from  the  thirteenth  to  the  twentieth  century,  and 
which  teems  with  art  and  life  and  enterprise  and 
offspring.  Now  Japan  in  Welt-Politik  is  our  ally. 

You  see,  the  British  Empire  has  no  common  eco- 
nomic interests  and  no  natural  common  enemy.  It 
is  not  adapted  to  any  form  of  Zollverein  or  any  form 
of  united  aggression.  Visibly,  on  the  map  of  the 
world  it  has  a  likeness  to  open  hands,  while  the 
German  Empire — except  for  a  few  ill-advised  and 
imitative  colonies — is  clenched  into  a  central  Euro- 
pean unity. 

Physically,  our  Empire  is  incurably  scattered, 
various,  and  divided,  and  it  is  to  quite  other  links 
and  forces,  it  seems  to  me,  than  fiscal  or  military 
unification  that  we  who  desire  its  continuance  must 
look  to  hold  it  together.  There  never  was  anything 
like  it  before.  Essentially  it  is  an  adventure  of  the 
British  spirit,  sanguine,  discursive,  and  beyond  com- 
parison insubordinate,  adaptable,  and  originating. 
It  has  been  made  by  odd  and  irregular  means,  by 
trading  companies,  pioneers,  explorers,  unauthorised 
seamen,  adventurers  like  Clive,  eccentrics  like  Gor- 

43 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

don,  invalids  like  Rhodes.  It  has  been  made,  in 
spite  of  authority  and  officialdom,  as  no  other  empire 
was  ever  made.  The  nominal  rulers  of  Britain  never 
planned  it;  it  happened  almost  in  spite  of  them. 
Their  chief  contribution  to  its  history  has  been  the 
loss  of  the  United  States.  It  is  a  living  thing  that 
has  arisen,  not  a  dead  thing  put  together.  Beneath 
the  thin  legal  and  administrative  ties  that  hold  it 
together  lies  the  far  more  vital  bond  of  a  traditional 
free  spontaneous  activity.  It  has  a  common  medium 
of  expression  in  the  English  tongue,  a  unity  of  liberal 
and  tolerant  purpose  amidst  its  enormous  variety  of 
localised  life  and  colour.  And  it  is  in  the  develop- 
ment and  strengthening,  the  enrichment,  the  render- 
ing more  conscious  and  more  purposeful,  of  that 
broad  creative  spirit  of  the  British  that  the  true 
cement  and  continuance  of  our  Empire  is  to  be  found. 

The  Empire  must  live  by  the  forces  that  begot  it. 
It  cannot  hope  to  give  any  such  exclusive  prosperity 
as  a  Zollverein  might  afford;  it  can  hold  out  no  hopes 
of  collective  conquests  and  triumphs — its  utmost 
military  r61e  must  be  the  guaranteeing  of  a  common 
inaggressive  security;  but  it  can,  and  if  it  is  to 
survive,  it  must,  give  all  its  constituent  parts  such 
a  civilisation  as  none  of  them  could  achieve  alone, 
a  civilisation,  a  wealth  and  fullness  of  life  increasing 
and  developing  with  the  years.  Through  that,  and 
that  alone,  can  it  be  made  worth  having  and  worth 
serving. 

And  in  the  first  place  the  whole  Empire  must  use 

44 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

the  English  language.  I  do  not  mean  that  any 
language  must  be  stamped  out,  that  a  thousand  lan- 
guages may  not  flourish  by  board  and  cradle  and  in 
folk-songs  and  village  gossip — Erse,  the  Taal,  a 
hundred  Indian  and  other  Eastern  tongues,  Canadian 
French — but  I  mean  that  also  English  must  be  avail- 
able, that  everywhere  there  must  be  English  teaching. 
And  everyone  who  wants  to  read  science  or  history 
or  philosophy,  to  come  out  of  the  village  life  into 
wider  thoughts  and  broader  horizons,  to  gain  appre- 
ciation in  art,  must  find  ready  to  hand,  easily  attain- 
able in  English,  all  there  is  to  know  and  all  that  has 
been  said  thereon.  It  is  worth  a  hundred  Dread- 
noughts and  a  million  soldiers  to  the  Empire,  that 
wherever  the  Imperial  posts  reach,  wherever  there  is 
a  curious  or  receptive  mind,  there  in  English  and  by 
the  Imperial  connexion  the  full  thought  of  the  race 
should  come.  To  the  lonely  youth  upon  the  New 
Zealand  sheep  farm,  to  the  young  Hindu,  to  the 
trapper  under  a  Labrador  tilt,  to  the  half-breed 
assistant  at  a  Burmese  oil-well,  to  the  self -educating 
Scottish  miner  or  the  Egyptian  clerk,  the  Empire  and 
the  English  language  should  exist,  visibly  and  cer- 
tainly, as  the  media  by  which  his  spirit  escapes  from 
his  immediate  surroundings  and  all  the  urgencies  of 
everyday,  into  a  limitless  fellowship  of  thought  and 
beauty. 

Now  I  am  not  writing  this  in  any  vague  rhetorical 
way;  I  mean  specifically  that  our  Empire  has  to 
become  the  medium  of  knowledge  and  thought  to 

45 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

every  intelligent  person  in  it,  or  that  it  is  bound  to 
go  to  pieces.  It  has  no  economic,  no  military,  no 
racial,  no  religious  unity.  Its  only  conceivable  unity 
is  a  unity  of  language  and  purpose  and  outlook.  If 
it  is  not  held  together  by  thought  and  spirit,  it  cannot 
be  held  together.  No  other  cement  exists  that  can 
hold  it  together  indefinitely. 

Not  only  English  literature,  but  all  other  litera- 
tures well  translated  into  English,  and  all  science  and 
all  philosophy,  have  to  be  brought  within  the  reach 
of  everyone  capable  of  availing  himself  of  such 
reading.  And  this  must  be  done,  not  by  private 
enterprise  or  for  gain,  but  as  an  Imperial  function. 
Wherever  the  Empire  extends  there  its  presence  must 
signify  all  that  breadth  of  thought  and  outlook  no 
localised  life  can  supply. 

Only  so  is  it  possible  to  establish  and  maintain  the 
wide  understandings,  the  common  sympathy  neces- 
sary to  our  continued  association.  The  Empire, 
mediately  or  immediately,  must  become  the  uni- 
versal educator,  news-agent,  book-distributor,  civil- 
iser-general,  and  vehicle  of  imaginative  inspiration  for 
its  peoples,  or  else  it  must  submit  to  the  gravitation 
of  its  various  parts  to  new  and  more  invigorating 
associations. 

No  empire,  it  may  be  urged,  has  ever  attempted 
anything  of  this  sort,  but  no  empire  like  the  British 
has  ever  yet  existed.  Its  conditions  and  needs  are 
unprecedented,  its  consolidation  is  a  new  problem, 
to  be  solved,  if  it  is  solved  at  all,  by  untried  means. 

46 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

And  in  the  English  language  as  a  vehicle  of 
thought  and  civilisation  alone  is  that  means  to  be 
found. 

Now  it  is  idle  to  pretend  that  at  the  present  time 
the  British  Empire  is  giving  its  constituent  peoples 
any  such  high  and  rewarding  civilisation  as  I  am  here 
suggesting.  It  gives  them  a  certain  immunity  from 
warfare,  a  penny  post,  an  occasional  spectacular 
coronation,  a  few  knighthoods  and  peerages,  and 
the  services  of  an  honest,  unsympathetic,  narrow- 
minded,  and  unattractive  officialism.  No  adequate 
effort  is  being  made  to  render  the  English  language 
universal  throughout  its  limits,  none  at  all  to  use  it 
as  a  medium  of  thought  and  enlightenment.  Half 
the  good  things  of  the  human  mind  are  outside  Eng- 
lish altogether,  and  there  is  not  sufficient  intelligence 
among  us  to  desire  to  bring  them  in.  If  one  would 
read  honest  and  able  criticism,  one  must  learn 
French;  if  one  would  be  abreast  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge and  philosophical  thought,  or  see  many  good 
plays  or  understand  the  contemporary  European 
mind,  German. 

And  yet  it  would  cost  amazingly  little  to  get  every 
good  foreign  thing  done  into  English  as  it  appeared. 
It  needs  only  a  little  understanding  and  a  little  organ- 
isation to  ensure  the  immediate  translation  of  every 
significant  article,  every  scientific  paper  of  the  slight- 
est value.  The  effort  and  arrangement  needed  to 
make  books,  facilities  for  research,  and  all  forms  of 
art  accessible  throughout  the  Empire,  would  be  alto- 

47 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

gether  trivial  in  proportion  to  the  consolidation  it 
would  effect. 

But  English  people  do  not  understand  these  things. 
Their  Empire  is  an  accident.  It  was  made  for  them 
by  their  exceptional  and  outcast  men,  and  in  the  end 
it  will  be  lost,  I  fear,  by  the  intellectual  inertness  of 
their  commonplace  and  dull-minded  leaders.  Empire 
has  happened  to  them  and  civilisation  has  happened 
to  them  as  fresh  lettuces  come  to  tame  rabbits. 
They  do  not  understand  how  they  got,  and  they  will 
not  understand  how  to  keep.  Art,  thought,  litera- 
ture, all  indeed  that  raises  men  above  locality  and 
habit,  all  that  can  justify  and  consolidate  the  Empire, 
is  nothing  to  them.  They  are  provincials  mocked 
by  a  world-wide  opportunity,  the  stupid  legatees  of 
a  great  generation  of  exiles.  They  go  out  of  town 
for  the  "shootin',"  and  come  back  for  the  fooleries 
of  Parliament,  and  to  see  what  Mr.  Redford  has  left 
of  our  playwrights  and  Sir  Jesse  Boot  of  our  writers, 
and  to  dine  in  restaurants  and  wear  clothes. 

Mostly  they  call  themselves  Imperialists,  which 
is  just  their  harmless  way  of  expressing  their  satis- 
faction with  things  as  they  are.  In  practice  their 
Imperialism  resolves  itself  into  a  vigorous  resistance 
to  taxation  and  an  ill-concealed  hostility  to  educa- 
tion. It  matters  nothing  to  them  that  the  whole 
next  generation  of  Canadians  has  drawn  its  ideas 
mainly  from  American  publications,  that  India  and 
Egypt,  in  despite  of  sounder  mental  nourishment, 
have  developed  their  own  vernacular  Press,  that 

48 


WILL  THE  EMPIRE  LIVE? 

Australia  and  New  Zealand  even  now  gravitate  to 
America  for  books  and  thought.  It  matters  nothing 
to  them  that  the  poverty  and  insularity  of  our  intel- 
lectual life  has  turned  American  art  to  France  and 
Italy,  and  the  American  universities  towards  Ger- 
many. The  slow  starvation  and  decline  of  our 
philosophy  and  science,  the  decadence  of  British 
invention  and  enterprise,  troubles  them  not  at  all, 
because  they  fail  to  connect  these  things  with  the 
tangible  facts  of  empire.  "The  world  cannot  wait 
for  the  English."  .  .  .  And  the  sands  of  our  Imperial 
opportunity  twirl  through  the  neck  of  the  hour-glass. 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 
(May,  1912) 


OUR  country  is,  I  think,  in  a  dangerous  state  of 
social  disturbance.  The  discontent  of  the  labouring 
mass  of  the  community  is  deep  and  increasing.  It 
may  be  that  we  are  in  the  opening  phase  of  a  real 
and  irreparable  class  war. 

Since  the  Coronation  we  have  moved  very  rapidly 
indeed  from  an  assurance  of  extreme  social  stability 
towards  the  recognition  of  a  spreading  disorganisa- 
tion. It  is  idle  to  pretend  any  longer  that  these 
Labour  troubles  are  the  mere  give  and  take  of  eco- 
nomic adjustment.  No  adjustment  is  in  progress. 
New  and  strange  urgencies  are  at  work  in  our  midst, 
forces  for  which  the  word  "revolutionary"  is  only 
too  faithfully  appropriate.  Nothing  is  being  done  to 
allay  these  forces ;  everything  conspires  to  exasperate 
them. 

Whither  are  these  forces  taking  us?  What  can 
still  be  done  and  what  has  to  be  done  to  avoid  the 
phase  of  social  destruction  to  which  we  seem  to  be 
drifting  ? 

Hitherto,  in  Great  Britain  at  any  rate,  the  working 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

man  has  shown  himself  a  being  of  the  most  limited 
and  practical  outlook.  His  narrowness  of  imagina- 
tion, his  lack  of  general  ideas,  has  been  the  despair 
of  the  Socialist  and  of  every  sort  of  revolutionary 
theorist.  He  may  have  struck  before,  but  only  for 
definite  increments  of  wages  or  definite  limitations 
of  toil;  his  acceptance  of  the  industrial  system  and 
its  methods  has  been  as  complete  and  unquestioning 
as  his  acceptance  of  earth  and  sky.  Now,  with  an 
effect  of  suddenness,  this  ceases  to  be  the  case.  A 
new  generation  of  workers  is  seen  replacing  the  old, 
workers  of  a  quality  unfamiliar  to  the  middle-aged 
and  elderly  men  who  still  manage  our  great  businesses 
and  political  affairs.  The  worker  is  beginning  now 
to  strike  for  unprecedented  ends — against  the  system, 
against  the  fundamental  conditions  of  labour,  to 
strike  for  no  defined  ends  at  all,  perplexingly  and 
disconcertingly.  The  old-fashioned  strike  was  a 
method  of  bargaining,  clumsy  and  violent  perhaps, 
but  bargaining  still;  the  new-fashioned  strike  is  far 
less  of  a  haggle,  far  more  of  a  display  of  temper.  The 
first  thing  that  has  to  be  realised  if  the  Labour  ques- 
tion is  to  be  understood  at  all  is  this,  that  the  temper 
of  Labour  has  changed  altogether  in  the  last  twenty 
or  thirty  years.  Essentially  that  is  a  change  due 
to  intelligence  not  merely  increased  but  greatly 
stimulated,  to  the  work,  that  is,  of  the  board  schools 
and  of  the  cheap  Press.  The  outlook  of  the  work- 
man has  passed  beyond  the  works  and  his  beer  and 
his  dog.  He  has  become — or,  rather,  he  has  been 

Si 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

replaced  by — a  being  of  eyes,  however  imperfect,  and 
of  criticism,  however  hasty  and  unjust.  The  work- 
ing man  of  to-day  reads,  talks,  has  general  ideas  and 
a  sense  of  the  round  world;  he  is  far  nearer  to  the 
ruler  of  to-day  in  knowledge  and  intellectual  range 
than  he  is  to  the  working  man  of  fifty  years  ago. 
The  politician  or  business  magnate  of  to-day  is  no 
better  educated  and  very  little  better  informed  than 
his  equals  were  fifty  years  ago.  The  chief  difference 
is  golf.  The  working  man  questions  a  thousand 
things  his  father  accepted  as  in  the  very  nature  of 
the  world,  and  among  others  he  begins  to  ask  with 
the  utmost  alertness  and  persistence  why  it  is  that 
he  in  particular  is  expected  to  toil.  The  answer,  the 
only  justifiable  answer,  should  be  that  that  is  the 
work  for  which  he  is  fitted  by  his  inferior  capacity 
and  culture,  that  these  others  are  a  special  and 
select  sort,  very  specially  trained  and  prepared  for 
their  responsibilities,  and  that  at  once  brings  this 
new  fact  of  a  working-class  criticism  of  social  values 
into  play.  The  old  workman  might  and  did  quarrel 
very  vigorously  with  his  specific  employer,  but  he 
never  set  out  to  arraign  all  employers;  he  took  the 
law  and  the  Church  and  Statecraft  and  politics  for 
the  higher  and  noble  things  they  claimed  to  be.  He 
wanted  an  extra  shilling  or  he  wanted  an  hour  of 
leisure,  and  that  was  as  much  as  he  wanted.  The 
young  workman,  on  the  other  hand,  has  put  the 
whole  social  system  upon  its  trial,  and  seems  quite 
disposed  to  give  an  adverse  verdict.  He  looks  far 

52 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

beyond  the  older  conflict  of  interests  between  em- 
ployer and  employed.  He  criticises  the  good  inten- 
tions of  the  whole  system  of  governing  and  influential 
people,  and  not  only  their  good  intentions,  but  their 
ability.  These  are  the  new  conditions,  and  the 
middle-aged  and  elderly  gentlemen  who  are  dealing 
with  the  crisis  on  the  supposition  that  their  vast 
experience  of  Labour  questions  in  the  'seventies  and 
'eighties  furnishes  valuable  guidance  in  this  present 
issue  are  merely  bringing  the  gunpowder  of  mis- 
apprehension to  the  revolutionary  fort. 

The  workman  of  the  new  generation  is  full  of  dis- 
trust, the  most  demoralising  of  social  influences. 
He  is  like  a  sailor  who  believes  no  longer  either  in  the 
good  faith  or  seamanship  of  his  captain,  and,  between 
desperation  and  contempt,  contemplates  vaguely 
but  persistently  the  assumption  of  control  by  a 
collective  forecastle.  He  is  like  a  private  soldier 
obsessed  with  the  idea  that  nothing  can  save  the 
situation  but  the  death  of  an  incompetent  officer. 
His  distrust  is  so  profound  that  he  ceases  not  only 
to  believe  in  the  employer,  but  he  ceases  to  believe 
in  the  law,  ceases  to  believe  in  Parliament,  as  a 
means  to  that  tolerable  life  he  desires;  and  he  falls 
back  steadily  upon  his  last  resource  of  a  strike,  and 
— if  by  repressive  tactics  we  make  it  so — a  criminal 
strike.  The  central  fact  of  all  this  present  trouble 
is  that  distrust.  There  is  only  one  way  in  which  our 
present  drift  towards  revolution  or  revolutionary 
disorder  can  be  arrested,  and  that  is  by  restoring  the 

5  S3 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

confidence  of  these  alienated  millions,  who  visibly 
now  are  changing  from  loyalty  to  the  Crown,  from 
a  simple  patriotism,  from  habitual  industry,  to  the 
more  and  more  effective  expression  of  a  deepening 
resentment. 

This  is  a  psychological  question,  a  matter  of  men- 
tal states.  Feats  of  legal  subtlety  are  inopportune, 
arithmetical  exploits  still  more  so.  To  emerge  with 
the  sum  of  45.  6^2 d.  as  a  minimum,  by  calculating  on 
the  basis  of  the  mine's  present  earnings,  from  a  con- 
ference which  the  miners  and  everybody  else  im- 
agined was  to  give  a  minimum  of  55.,  may  be  clever, 
but  it  is  certainly  not  politic  in  the  present  stage  of 
Labour  feeling.  To  stamp  violently  upon  obscure 
newspapers  nobody  had  heard  of  before  and  send  a 
printer  to  prison,  and  to  give  thereby  a  flaming  ad- 
vertisement to  the  possible  use  of  soldiers  in  civil 
conflicts  and  set  every  barrack-room  talking,  may  be 
permissible,  but  it  is  certainly  very  ill-advised.  The 
distrust  deepens. 

The  real  task  before  a  governing  class  that  means 
to  go  on  governing  is  not  just  at  present  to  get  the 
better  of  an  argument  or  the  best  of  a  bargain,  but 
to  lay  hold  of  the  imaginations  of  this  drifting,  sullen 
and  suspicious  multitude,  which  is  the  working  body 
of  the  country.  What  we  prosperous  people,  who 
have  nearly  all  the  good  things  of  life  and  most  of 
the  opportunity,  have  to  do  now  is  to  justify  our- 
selves. We  have  to  show  that  we  are  indeed  re- 
sponsible and  serviceable,  willing  to  give  ourselves, 

54 


THE   LABOUR  UNREST 

and  to  give  ourselves  generously,  for  what  we  have 
and  what  we  have  had.  We  have  to  meet  the 
challenge  of  this  distrust. 

The  slack  days  for  rulers  and  owners  are  over.  If 
there  are  still  to  be  rulers  and  owners  and  managing 
and  governing  people,  then  in  the  face  of  the  new 
masses,  sensitive,  intelligent,  critical,  irritable,  as  no 
common  people  have  ever  been  before,  these  rulers 
and  owners  must  be  prepared  to  make  themselves  and 
display  themselves  wise,  capable,  and  heroic — beyond 
any  aristocratic  precedent.  The  alternative,  if  it  is 
an  alternative,  is  resignation — to  the  Social  De- 
mocracy. 

And  it  is  just  because  we  are  all  beginning  to 
realise  the  immense  need  for  this  heroic  quality  in 
those  who  rule  and  are  rich  and  powerful,  as  the 
response  and  corrective  to  these  distrusts  and  jeal- 
ousies that  are  threatening  to  disintegrate  our  social 
order,  that  we  have  all  followed  the  details  of  this 
great  catastrophe  in  the  Atlantic  with  such  intense 
solicitude.  It  was  one  of  those  accidents  that  happen 
with  a  precision  of  time  and  circumstance  that  out- 
does art;  not  an  incident  in  it  all  that  was  not  su- 
premely typical.  It  was  the  penetrating  comment 
of  chance  upon  our  entire  social  situation.  Beneath 
a  surface  of  magnificent  efficiency  was — slap-dash. 
The  ship  was  not  even  equipped  to  save  its  third- 
class  passengers;  they  had  placed  themselves  on 
board  with  an  infinite  confidence  in  the  care  that  was 
to  be  taken  of  them,  and  they  went  down,  and  most 

55 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  their  women  and  children  went  down  with  the 
cry  of  those  who  find  themselves  cheated  out  of  life. 
In  the  unfolding  record  of  behaviour  it  is  the 
stewardesses  and  bandsmen  and  engineers — persons 
of  the  trade-union  class — who  shine  as  brightly  as 
any.  And  by  the  supreme  artistry  of  Chance  it  fell 
to  the  lot  of  that  tragic  and  unhappy  gentleman,  Mr. 
Bruce  Ismay,  to  be  aboard  and  to  be  caught  by  the 
urgent  vacancy  in  the  boat  and  the  snare  of  the 
moment.  No  untried  man  dare  say  that  he  would 
have  behaved  better  in  his  place.  But  for  capitalism 
and  for  our  existing  social  system  his  escape — with 
five  and  fifty  third-class  children  waiting  below  to 
drown — was  the  abandonment  of  every  noble  pre- 
tension. It  is  not  the  man  I  would  criticise,  but  the 
manifest  absence  of  any  such  sense  of  the  supreme 
dignity  of  his  position  as  would  have  sustained  him 
in  that  crisis.  He  was  a  rich  man  and  a  ruling  man, 
but  in  the  test  he  was  not  a  proud  man.  In  the 
common  man's  realisation  that  such  is  indeed  the 
case  with  most  of  those  who  dominate  our  world,  lies 
the  true  cause  and  danger  of  our  social  indiscipline. 
And  the  remedy  in  the  first  place  lies  not  in  social 
legislation  and  so  forth,  but  in  the  consciences  of 
the  wealthy.  Heroism  and  a  generous  devotion  to 
the  common  good  are  the  only  effective  answer 
to  distrust. 

§2 

The  essential  trouble  in  our  growing  labour  dis- 
order is  the  profound  distrust  which  has  grown  up  in 

56 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

the  minds  of  the  new  generation  of  workers  of  either 
the  ability  or  the  good  faith  of  the  property-owning, 
ruling  and  directing  class.  I  do  not  attempt  to 
judge  the  justice  or  not  of  this  distrust;  I  merely 
point  to  its  existence  as  one  of  the  striking  and  es- 
sential factors  in  the  contemporary  labour  situation. 

This  distrust  is  not,  perhaps,  the  proximate  cause 
of  the  strikes  that  now  follow  each  other  so  dis- 
concertingly, but  it  embitters  their  spirit,  it  prevents 
their  settlement,  and  leads  to  their  renewal.  I  have 
tried  to  suggest  that,  whatever  immediate  devices  for 
pacification  might  be  employed,  the  only  way  to  a 
better  understanding  and  co-operation,  the  only 
escape  from  a  social  slide  towards  the  unknown  pos- 
sibilities of  Social  Democracy,  lies  in  an  exaltation 
of  the  standard  of  achievement  and  of  the  sense  of 
responsibility  in  the  possessing  and  governing  classes. 
It  is  not  so  much  "Wake  up,  England!"  that  I  would 
say  as  "Wake  up,  gentlemen!" — for  the  new  genera- 
tion of  the  workers  is  beyond  all  question  quite 
alarmingly  awake  and  critical  and  angry.  And  they 
have  not  merely  to  wake  up,  they  have  to  wake  up 
visibly  and  ostentatiously  if  those  old  class  reliances 
on  which  our  system  is  based  are  to  be  preserved  and 
restored. 

We  need  before  anything  else  a  restoration  of  class 
confidence.  It  is  a  time  when  class  should  speak 
with  class  very  frankly. 

There  is  too  much  facile  misrepresentation,  too 
ready  a  disposition  on  either  side  to  accept  carica- 

57 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

tures  as  portraits  and  charges  as  facts.  However 
tacit  our  understandings  were  in  the  past,  with  this 
new  kind  of  labour,  this  young,  restive  labour  of  the 
twentieth  century,  which  can  read,  discuss  and  com- 
bine, we  need  something  in  the  nature  of  a  social 
contract.  And  it  is  when  one  comes  to  consider  by 
what  possible  means  these  suspicious  third-class 
passengers  in  our  leaking  and  imperilled  social  liner 
can  be  brought  into  generous  co-operation  with  the 
second  and  the  first  that  one  discovers  just  how 
lamentably  out  of  date  and  out  of  order  our  political 
institutions,  which  should  supply  the  means  for  just 
this  inter-class  discussion,  have  become.  Between 
the  busy  and  preoccupied  owning  and  employing 
class  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  distressed,  uneasy 
masses  on  the  other,  intervenes  the  professional 
politician,  not  as  a  mediator,  but  as  an  obstacle,  who 
must  be  propitiated  before  any  dealings  are  possible. 
Our  natural  politics  no  longer  express  the  realities  of 
the  national  life;  they  are  a  mere  impediment  in  the 
speech  of  the  community.  With  our  whole  social 
order  in  danger,  our  Legislature  is  busy  over  the 
trivial  little  affairs  of  the  Welsh  Established  Church, 
whose  whole  endowment  is  not  equal  to  the  fortune 
of  any  one  of  half  a  dozen  Titanic  passengers  or  a 
tithe  of  the  probable  loss  of  another  strike  among 
the  miners.  We  have  a  Legislature  almost  antiquar- 
ian, compiling  a  museum  of  Gladstonian  legacies 
rather  than  governing  our  world  to-day. 

Law  is  the  basis  of  civilisation,  but  the  lawyer  is 

58 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

the  law's  consequence,  and,  with  us  at  least,  the 
legal  profession  is  the  political  profession.  It  de- 
lights in  false  issues  and  merely  technical  politics. 
Steadily  with  the  ascendancy  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  barristers  have  ousted  other  types  of  men 
from  political  power.  The  decline  of  the  House  of 
Lords  has  been  the  last  triumph  of  the  House  of 
Lawyers,  and  we  are  governed  now  to  a  large  extent 
not  so  much  by  the  people  for  the  people  as  by  the 
barristers  for  the  barristers.  They  set  the  tone  of 
political  life.  And  since  they  are  the  most  special- 
ised, the  most  specifically  trained  of  all  the  profes- 
sions, since  their  training  is  absolutely  antagonistic 
to  the  creative  impulses  of  the  constructive  artist 
and  the  controlled  experiments  of  the  scientific  man, 
since  the  business  is  with  evidence  and  advantages 
and  the  skilful  use  of  evidence  and  advantages,  and 
not  with  understanding,  they  are  the  least  statesman- 
like of  all  educated  men,  and  they  give  our  public 
life  a  tone  as  hopelessly  discordant  with  our  very 
great  and  urgent  social  needs  as  one  could  well  im- 
agine. They  do  not  want  to  deal  at  all  with  great 
and  urgent  social  needs.  They  play  a  game,  a  long 
and  interesting  game,  with  parties  as  sides,  a  game 
that  rewards  the  industrious  player  with  prominence, 
place,  power  and  great  rewards,  and  the  less  that 
game  involves  the  passionate  interests  of  other  men, 
the  less  it  draws  them  into  participation  and  angry 
interference,  the  better  for  the  steady  development 
of  the  politician's  career.  A  distinguished  and  ac- 

59 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

tive  fruitlessness,  leaving  the  world  at  last  as  he 
found  it,  is  the  political  barrister's  ideal  career.  To 
achieve  that,  he  must  maintain  legal  and  political 
monopolies,  and  prevent  the  invasion  of  political  life 
by  living  interests.  And  so  far  as  he  has  any  views 
about  labour  beyond  the  margin  of  his  brief,  the 
barrister  politician  seems  to  regard  getting  men  back 
to  work  on  any  terms  and  as  soon  as  possible  as  the 
highest  good. 

And  it  is  with  such  men  that  our  insurgent  modern 
labour,  with  its  vaguely  apprehended  wants,  its 
large  occasions  and  its  rapid  emotional  reactions, 
comes  into  contact  directly  it  attempts  to  adjust 
itself  in  the  social  body.  It  is  one  of  the  main 
factors  in  the  progressive  embitterment  of  the  labour 
situation  that  whatever  business  is  afoot — arbitra- 
tion, conciliation,  inquiry — our  contemporary  system 
presents  itself  to  labour  almost  invariably  in  a  legal 
guise.  The  natural  infirmities  of  humanity  rebel 
against  an  unimaginative  legality  of  attitude,  and 
the  common  workaday  man  has  no  more  love  for  this 
great  and  necessary  profession  to-day  than  he  had 
in  the  time  of  Jack  Cade.  Little  reasonable  things 
from  the  lawyers'  point  of  view — the  rejection,  for 
example,  of  certain  evidence  in  the  Titanic  inquiry 
because  it  might  amount  to  a  charge  of  manslaughter, 
the  constant  interruption  and  checking  of  a  labour 
representative  at  the  same  tribunal  upon  trivial 
points — irritate  quite  disproportionately. 

Lawyer  and  working  man  are  antipathetic  types, 

60 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

and  it  is  a  very  grave  national  misfortune  that  at 
this  time,  when  our  situation  calls  aloud  for  state- 
craft and  a  certain  greatness  of  treatment,  our  public 
life  should  be  dominated  as  it  has  never  been  domi- 
nated before  by  this  most  able  and  illiberal  profession. 
Now  for  that  great  multitude  of  prosperous  people 
who  find  themselves  at  once  deeply  concerned  in  our 
present  social  and  economic  crisis,  and  either  help- 
lessly entangled  in  party  organisation  or  helplessly 
outside  politics,  the  elimination  and  cure  of  this  dis- 
ease of  statecraft,  the  professional  politician,  has 
become  a  very  urgent  matter.  To  destroy  him,  to 
get  him  back  to  his  law  courts  and  keep  him  there, 
it  is  necessary  to  destroy  the  machinery  of  the  party 
system  that  sustains  him,  and  to  adopt  some  elec- 
toral method  that  will  no  longer  put  the  indepen- 
dent representative  man  at  a  hopeless  disadvantage 
against  the  party  nominee.  Such  a  method  is  to  be 
found  in  proportional  representation  with  large  con- 
stituencies, and  to  that  we  must  look  for  our  ulti- 
mate liberation  from  our  present  masters,  these 
politician  barristers.  But  the  Labour  situation  can- 
not wait  for  this  millennial  release,  and  for  the  current 
issue  it  seems  to  me  patent  that  every  reasonable 
prosperous  man  will,  even  at  the  cost  to  himself  of 
some  trouble  and  hard  thinking,  do  his  best  to  keep 
as  much  of  this  great  and  acute  controversy  as  he 
possibly  can  out  of  the  lawyer's  and  mere  politician's 
hands  and  in  his  own.  Leave  Labour  to  the  lawyers, 
and  we  shall  go  very  deeply  into  trouble  indeed 

61 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

before  this  business  is  over.  They  will  score  their 
points,  they  will  achieve  remarkable  agreements  full 
of  the  possibility  of  subsequent  surprises,  they  will 
make  reputations,  and  da  everything  Heaven  and 
their  professional  training Viave  made  them  to  do, 
and  they  will  exasperate  and  exasperate! 

Lawyers  made  the  first  French  Revolution,  and 
now,  on  a  different  side,  they  may  yet  bring  about 
an  English  one.  These  men  below  there  are  still,  as 
a  class,  wonderfully  patient  and  reasonable,  quite  pre- 
pared to  take  orders  and  recognise  superior  knowl- 
edge, wisdom  and  nobility.  They  make  the  most 
reasonable  claims  for  a  tolerable  life,  for  certain 
assurances  and  certain  latitudes.  Implicit  rather 
than  expressed  is  their  demand  for  wisdom  and 
right  direction  from  those  to  whom  the  great  surplus 
and  freedom  of  civilisation  are  given.  It  is  an  entirely 
reasonable  demand  if  man  is  indeed  a  social  animal. 
But  we  have  got  to  treat  them  fairly  and  openly. 
This  patience  and  reasonableness  and  willingness  for 
leadership  is  not  limitless.  It  is  no  good  scoring  our 
mean  little  points,  for  example,  and  accusing  them 
of  breach  of  contract  and  all  sorts  of  theoretical 
wrongs  because  they  won't  abide  by  agreements  to 
accept  a  certain  scale  of  wages  when  the  purchasing 
power  of  money  has  declined.  When  they  made 
that  agreement  they  did  not  think  of  that  possibility. 
When  they  said  a  pound  they  thought  of  what  was 
then  a  poundsworth  of  living.  The  Mint  has  since 
been  increasing  its  annual  output  of  gold  coins  to 

62 


THE   LABOUR  UNREST 

two  or  three  times  the  former  amount,  and  we  have, 
as  it  were,  debased  the  coinage  with  extraordinary 
quantities  of  gold.  But  we  who  know  and  own  did 
nothing  to  adjust  that;  we  did  not  tell  the  working 
man  of  that;  we  have  let  him  find  it  out  slowly  and 
indirectly  at  the  grocer's  shop.  That  may  be  per- 
missible from  the  lawyer's  point  of  view,  but  it 
certainly  isn't  from  the  gentleman's,  and  it  is  only 
by  the  plea  that  its  inequalities  give  society  a  gentle- 
man that  our  present  social  system  can  claim  to 
endure. 

I  would  like  to  accentuate  that,  because  if  we  are 
to  emerge  again  from  these  acute  social  dissensions  a 
reunited  and  powerful  people,  there  has  to  be  a 
change  of  tone,  a  new  generosity  on  the  part  of  those 
who  deal  with  Labour  speeches,  Labour  literature, 
Labour  representatives,  and  Labour  claims.  Labour 
is  necessarily  at  an  enormous  disadvantage  in  dis- 
cussion ;  in  spite  of  a  tremendous  inferiority  in  train- 
ing and  education  it  is  trying  to  tell  the  community 
its  conception  of  its  needs  and  purposes.  It  is  not 
only  young  as  a  participator  in  the  discussion  of 
affairs;  it  is  actually  young.  The  average  working 
man  is  not  half  the  age  of  the  ripe  politicians  and 
judges  and  lawyers  and  wealthy  organisers  who  trip 
him  up  legally,  accuse  him  of  bad  faith,  mark  his 
every  inconsistency.  It  isn't  becoming  so  to  use  our 
forensic  advantages.  It  isn't — if  that  has  no  appeal 
to  you — wise. 

The  thing  our  society  has  most  to  fear  from 

63 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Labour  is  not  organised  resistance,  not  victorious 
strikes  and  raised  conditions,  but  the  black  resent- 
ment that  follows  defeat.  Meet  Labour  half-way, 
and  you  will  find  a  new  co-operation  in  government ; 
stick  to  your  legal  rights,  draw  the  net  of  repressive 
legislation  tighter,  then  you  will  presently  have  to 
deal  with  Labour  enraged.  If  the  anger  burns  free, 
that  means  revolution;  if  you  crush  out  the  hope  of 
that,  then  sabotage  and  a  sullen  general  sympathy 
for  anarchistic  crime. 

§3 

In  the  preceding  pages  I  have  discussed  certain 
aspects  of  the  present  Labour  situation.  I  have  tried 
to  show  the  profound  significance  in  this  discussion 
of  the  distrust  which  has  grown  up  in  the  minds  of 
the  workers,  and  how  this  distrust  is  being  exacer- 
bated by  our  entirely  too  forensic  method  of  treating 
their  claims.  I  want  now  to  point  out  a  still  more 
powerful  set  of  influences  which  is  steadily  turning 
our  labour  struggles  from  mere  attempts  to  adjust 
hours  and  wages  into  movements  that  are  gravely 
and  deliberately  revolutionary. 

This  is  the  obvious  devotion  of  a  large  and  growing 
proportion  of  the  time  and  energy  of  the  owning  and 
ruling  classes  to  pleasure  and  excitement,  and  the 
way  in  which  this  spectacle  of  amusement  and  ad- 
venture is  now  being  brought  before  the  eyes  and 
into  the  imagination  of  the  working  man. 

The  intimate  psychology  of  work  is  a  thing  alto- 

64 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

gether  too  little  considered  and  discussed.  One 
asks:  "What  keeps  a  workman  working  properly  at 
his  work?"  and  it  seems  a  sufficient  answer  to  say 
that  it  is  the  need  of  getting  a  living.  But  that  is 
not  the  complete  answer.  Work  must  to  some  extent 
interest;  if  it  bores,  no  power  on  earth  will  keep  a 
man  doing  it  properly.  And  the  tendency  of  modern 
industrialism  has  been  to  subdivide  processes  and 
make  work  more  boring  and  irksome.  Also  the 
workman  must  be  satisfied  with  the  living  he  is 
getting,  and  the  tendency  of  newspaper,  theatre, 
cinematograph  show  and  so  forth  is  to  fill  his  mind 
with  ideas  of  ways  of  living  infinitely  more  agreeable 
and  interesting  than  his  own.  Habit  also  counts 
very  largely  in  the  regular  return  of  the  man  to  his 
job,  and  the  fluctuations  of  employment,  the  failure 
of  the  employing  class  to  provide  any  alternative 
to  idleness  during  slack  time,  break  that  habit  of 
industry.  And  then,  last  but  not  least,  there  is  self- 
respect.  Men  and  women  are  capable  of  wonders  of 
self -discipline  and  effort  if  they  feel  that  theirs  is  a 
meritorious  service,  if  they  imagine  the  thing  they 
are  doing  is  the  thing  they  ought  to  do.  A  miner 
will  cut  coal  in  a  different  spirit  and  with  a  fading 
zest  if  he  knows  his  day's  output  is  to  be  burnt  to 
waste  secretly  by  a  lunatic.  Man  is  a  social  animal; 
few  men  are  naturally  social  rebels,  and  most  will 
toil  very  cheerfully  in  subordination  if  they  feel  that 
the  collective  end  is  a  fine  thing  and  a  great  thing. 
Now,  this  force  of  self-respect  is  much  more 

65 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

acutely  present  in  the  mind  of  the  modern  worker 
than  it  was  in  the  thought  of  his  fathers.  He  is 
intellectually  more  active  than  his  predecessors,  his 
imagination  is  relatively  stimulated,  he  asks  wide 
questions.  The  worker  of  a  former  generation  took 
himself  for  granted;  it  is  a  new  phase  when  the 
toilers  begin  to  ask,  not  one  man  here  or  there,  but 
in  masses,  in  battalions,  in  trades:  "Why,  then,  are 
we  toilers,  and  for  what  is  it  that  we  toil?" 

What  answer  do  we  give  them? 

I  ask  the  reader  to  put  himself  in  the  place  of  a 
good  workman,  a  young,  capable  miner,  let  us  say, 
in  search  of  an  answer  to  that  question.  He  is,  we 
will  suppose,  temporarily  unemployed  through  the 
production  of  a  glut  of  coal,  and  he  goes  about  the 
world  trying  to  see  the  fine  and  noble  collective 
achievements  that  justify  the  devotion  of  his  whole 
life  to  humble  toil.  I  ask  the  reader :  What  have  we 
got  to  show  that  man?  What  are  we  doing  up  in 
the  light  and  air  that  justifies  our  demand  that  he 
should  go  on  hewing  in  narrow  seams  and  cramped 
corners  until  he  can  hew  no  more?  Where  is  he  to 
be  taken  to  see  these  crowning  fruits  of  our  release 
from  toil  ?  Shall  we  take  him  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  note  which  of  the  barristers  is  making  most 
headway  over  Welsh  Disestablishment,  or  shall  we 
take  him  to  the  Titanic  inquiry  to  hear  the  latest 
about  those  fifty-five  third-class  children  (out  of 
eighty-three)  who  were  drowned?  Shall  we  give 
him  an  hour  or  so  among  the  portraits  at  the  Royal 

66 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

Academy,  or  shall  we  make  an  enthusiastic  tour  of 
London  sculpture  and  architecture  and  saturate  his 
soul  with  the  beauty  he  makes  possible?  The  new 
Automobile  Club,  for  example.  "Without  you  and 
your  subordination  we  could  not  have  had  that." 
Or  suppose  we  took  him  the  round  of  the  West-End 
clubs  and  restaurants  and  made  him  estimate  how 
many  dinners  London  can  produce  at  a  pinch  at  the 
price  of  his  local  daily  minimum,  say,  and  upward; 
or  borrow  an  aeroplane  at  Hendon  and  soar  about 
counting  all  the  golfers  in  the  Home  Counties  on 
any  week-day  afternoon.  "You  suffer  at  the  roots 
of  things,  far  below  there,  but  see  all  this  nobility 
and  splendour,  these  sweet,  bright  flowers  to  which 
your  rootlet  life  contributes."  Or  we  might  spend 
a  pleasant  morning  trying  to  get  a  passable  woman's 
hat  for  the  price  of  his  average  weekly  wages  in  some 
West-End  shop.  .  .  . 

But  indeed  this  thing  is  actually  happening.  The 
older  type  of  miner  was  illiterate,  incurious;  he  read 
nothing,  lived  his  own  life,  and  if  he  had  any  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  urgencies  in  him  beyond 
eating  and  drinking  and  dog-fighting,  the  local  little 
Bethel  shunted  them  away  from  any  effective  social 
criticism.  The  new  generation  of  miners  is  on  an 
altogether  different  basis.  It  is  at  once  less  brutal 
and  less  spiritual;  it  is  alert,  informed,  sceptical,  and 
the  Press,  with  photographic  illustrations,  the  cine- 
ma, and  a  score  of  collateral  forces,  are  giving  it 
precisely  that  spectacular  view  of  luxury,  amuse- 

67 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ment,  aimlessness  and  excitement,  taunting  it  with 
just  that  suggestion  that  it  is  for  that,  and  that 
alone,  that  the  worker's  back  aches  and  his  muscles 
strain.  Whatever  gravity  and  spaciousness  of  aim 
there  may  be  in  our  prosperous  social  life  does  not 
appear  to  him.  He  sees,  and  he  sees  all  the  more 
brightly  because  he  is  looking  at  it  out  of  toil  and 
darkness,  the  glitter,  the  delight  for  delight's  sake, 
the  show  and  the  pride  and  the  folly.  Cannot  you 
understand  how  it  is  that  these  young  men  down 
there  in  the  hot  and  dangerous  and  toilsome  and 
inglorious  places  of  life  are  beginning  to  cry  out, 
"We  are  being  made  fools  of,"  and  to  fling  down 
their  tools,  and  cannot  you  see  how  futile  it  is  to 
dream  that  Mr.  Asquith  or  some  other  politician  by 
some  trick  of  a  Conciliation  Act  or  some  claptrap  of 
Compulsory  Arbitration,  or  that  any  belated  sup- 
pression of  discussion  and  strike  organisations  by  the 
law  will  avert  this  gathering  storm?  The  Spectacle 
of  Pleasure,  the  parade  of  clothes,  estates,  motor- 
cars, luxury  and  vanity  in  the  sight  of  the  workers 
is  the  culminating  irritant  of  labour.  So  long  as  that 
goes  on,  this  sombre  resolve  to  which  we  are  all 
awakening,  this  sombre  resolve  rather  to  wreck  the 
whole  fabric  than  to  continue  patiently  at  work, 
will  gather  strength.  It  does  not  matter  that  such 
a  resolve  is  hopeless  and  unseasonable;  we  are  dealing 
here  with  the  profounder  impulses  that  underlie 
reason.  Crush  this  resentment;  it  will  recur  with 
accumulated  strength. 

68 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

It  does  not  matter  that  there  is  no  plan  in  exist- 
ence for  any  kind  of  social  order  that  could  be  set 
up  in  the  place  of  our  present  system;  no  plan,  that 
is,  that  will  endure  half  an  hour's  practical  criticism. 
The  cardinal  fact  before  us  is  that  the  workers  do 
not  intend  to  stand  things  as  they  are,  and  that  no 
clever  arguments,  no  expert  handling  of  legal  points, 
no  ingenious  appearances  of  concession,  will  stay  that 
progressive  embitterment. 

But  I  think  I  have  said  enough  to  express  and 
perhaps  convey  my  conviction  that  our  present 
labour  troubles  are  unprecedented,  and  that  they 
mean  the  end  of  an  epoch.  The  supply  of  good- 
tempered,  cheap  labour — upon  which  the  fabric  of 
our  contemporary  ease  and  comfort  is  erected — is 
giving  out.  The  spread  of  information  and  the 
means  of  presentation  in  every  class  and  the  increase 
of  luxury  and  self-indulgence  in  the  prosperous 
classes  are  the  chief  cause  of  that.  In  the  place  of 
that  old  convenient  labour  comes  a  new  sort  of 
labour,  reluctant,  resentful,  critical,  and  suspicious. 
The  replacement  has  already  gone  so  far  that  I  am 
certain  that  attempts  to  baffle  and  coerce  the  workers 
back  to  their  old  conditions  must  inevitably  lead  to 
a  series  of  increasingly  destructive  outbreaks,  to 
stresses  and  disorder  culminating  in  revolution.  It 
is  useless  to  dream  of  going  on  now  for  much  longer 
upon  the  old  lines;  our  civilisation,  if  it  is  not  to  enter 
upon  a  phase  of  conflict  and  decay,  must  begin  to 
adapt  itself  to  the  new  conditions,  of  which  the  first 

6  69 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  foremost  is  that  the  wages-earning,  labouring 
class  as  a  distinctive  class,  consenting  to  a  distinctive 
treatment  and  accepting  life  at  a  disadvantage,  is 
going  to  disappear.  Whether  we  do  it  soon  as  the 
result  of  our  reflections  upon  the  present  situation, 
or  whether  we  do  it  presently  through  the  impover- 
ishment that  must  necessarily  result  from  a  lengthen- 
ing period  of  industrial  unrest,  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  we  are  going  to  curtail  very  considerably 
the  current  extravagance  of  the  spending  and  direct- 
ing classes  upon  food,  clothing,  display,  and  all  the 
luxuries  of  life.  The  phase  of  affluence  is  over.  And 
unless  we  are  to  be  the  mere  passive  spectators  of  an 
unprecedented  reduction  of  our  lives,  all  of  us  who 
have  leisure  and  opportunity  have  to  set  ourselves 
very  strenuously  to  the  problem  not  of  reconciling 
ourselves  to  the  wage-earners,  for  that  possibility  is 
over,  but  of  establishing  a  new  method  of  co-opera- 
tion with  those  who  seem  to  be  definitely  decided 
not  to  remain  wage-earners  for  very  much  longer. 
We  have,  as  sensible  people,  to  realise  that  the  old 
arrangement,  which  has  given  us  of  the  fortunate 
minority  so  much  leisure,  luxury,  and  abundance, 
advantages  we  have  as  a  class  put  to  so  vulgar  and 
unprofitable  a  use,  is  breaking  down,  and  that  we 
have  to  discover  a  new,  more  equable  way  of  getting 
the  world's  work  done. 

Certain  things  stand  out  pretty  obviously.  It  is 
clear  that  in  the  times  ahead  of  us  there  must  be 
more  economy  in  giving  trouble  and  causing  work,  a 

70 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

greater  willingness  to  do  work  for  ourselves,  a  great 
economy  of  labour  through  machinery  and  skilful 
management.  So  much  is  unavoidable  if  we  are  to 
meet  these  enlarged  requirements  upon  which  the 
insurgent  worker  insists.  If  we,  who  have  at  least 
some  experience  of  affairs,  who  own  property,  manage 
businesses,  and  discuss  and  influence  public  organisa- 
tion, if  we  are  not  prepared  to  undertake  this  work 
of  discipline  and  adaptation  for  ourselves,  then  a 
time  is  not  far  distant  when  insurrectionary  leaders, 
calling  themselves  Socialists  or  Syndicalists,  or  what 
not,  men  with  none  of  our  experience,  little  of  our 
knowledge,  and  far  less  hope  of  success,  will  take 
that  task  out  of  our  hands.1 

We  have,  in  fact,  to  "pull  ourselves  together,"  as 
the  phrase  goes,  and  make  an  end  to  all  this  slack, 
extravagant  living,  this  spectacle  of  pleasure,  that 
has  been  spreading  and  intensifying  in  every  civilised 
community  for  the  last  three  or  four  decades.  What 
is  happening  to  Labour  is  indeed,  from  one  point  of 
view,  little  else  than  the  correlative  of  what  has  been 
happening  to  the  more  prosperous  classes  in  the  com- 
munity. They  have  lost  their  self-discipline,  their 
gravity,  their  sense  of  high  aims,  they  have  become 
the  victims  of  their  advantages,  and  Labour,  grown 
observant  and  intelligent,  has  discovered  itself  and 
declares  itself  no  longer  subordinate.  Just  what 
powers  of  recovery  and  reconstruction  our  system 

1  J^arkinism  comes  to  endorse  me  since  this  was  written, 
71 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

may  have  under  these  circumstances  the  decades 
immediately  before  us  will  show. 


Let  us  try  to  anticipate  some  of  the  social  develop- 
ments that  are  likely  to  spring  out  of  the  present 
labour  situation. 

It  is  quite  conceivable,  of  course,  that  what  lies 
before  us  is  not  development  but  disorder.  Given 
sufficient  suspicion  on  one  side  and  sufficient  obsti- 
nacy and  trickery  on  the  other,  it  may  be  impossible 
to  restore  social  peace  in  any  form,  and  industrialism 
may  degenerate  into  a  wasteful  and  incurable  con- 
flict. But  that  distressful  possibility  is  the  worst  and 
perhaps  the  least  probable  of  many.  It  is  much 
more  acceptable  to  suppose  that  our  social  order 
will  be  able  to  adjust  itself  to  the  new  outlook  and 
temper  and  quality  of  the  labour  stratum  that 
elementary  education,  a  Press  very  cheap  and  free, 
and  a  period  of  great  general  affluence  have  brought 
about. 

One  almost  inevitable  feature  of  any  such  adapta- 
tion will  be  a  changed  spirit  in  the  general  body  of 
society.  We  have  come  to  a  serious  condition  of  our 
affairs,  and  we  shall  not  get  them  into  order  again 
without  a  thorough  bracing-up  of  ourselves  in  the 
process.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  for  a  large 
portion  of  our  comfortable  classes  existence  has  been 
altogether  too  easy  for  the  last  lifetime  or  so.  The 

73 


THE   LABOUR  UNREST 

great  bulk  of  the  world's  work  has  been  done  out  of 
their  sight  and  knowledge ;  it  has  seemed  unnecessary 
to  trouble  much  about  the  general  conduct  of  things, 
unnecessary,  as  they  say,  to  "take  life  too  seriously." 
This  has  not  made  them  so  much  vicious  as  slack, 
lazy,  and  over-confident;  there  has  been  an  elabora- 
tion of  trivial  things  and  a  neglect  of  troublesome  and 
important  things.  The  one  grave  shock  of  the  Boer 
war  has  long  been  explained  and  sentimentalised 
away.  But  it  will  not  be  so  easy  to  explain  away  a 
dislocated  train  service  and  an  empty  coal  cellar  as 
it  was  to  get  a  favourable  interpretation  upon  some 
demonstration  of  national  incompetence  half  the 
world  away. 

It  is  indeed  no  disaster,  but  a  matter  for  sincere 
congratulation,  that  the  British  prosperous  and  the 
British  successful,  to  whom  warning  after  warning 
has  rained  in  vain  from  the  days  of  Ruskin,  Carlyle, 
Matthew  Arnold,  should  be  called  to  account  at 
last  in  their  own  household.  They  will  grumble, 
they  will  be  very  angry,  but  in  the  end,  I  believe, 
they  will  rise  to  the  opportunities  of  their  incon- 
venience. They  will  shake  off  their  intellectual 
lassitude,  take  over  again  the  public  and  private 
affairs  they  have  come  to  leave  so  largely  in  the 
hands  of  the  political  barrister  and  the  family  so- 
licitor, become  keen  and  critical  and  constructive, 
bring  themselves  up  to  date  again. 

That  is  not,  of  course,  inevitable,  but  I  am  taking 
now  the  more  hopeful  view. 

73 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  then?  What  sort  of  working  arrangements 
are  our  renascent  owning  and  directing  classes  likely 
to  make  with  the  new  labouring  class?  How  is  the 
work  going  to  be  done  in  the  harder,  cleaner,  more 
equalised,  and  better  managed  State  that,  in  one's 
hopeful  mood,  one  sees  ahead  of  us  ? 

Now  after  the  experiences  of  the  past  twelve 
months,  it  is  obvious  that  the  days  when  most  of  the 
directed  and  inferior  work  of  the  community  will  be 
done  by  intermittently  employed  and  impecunious 
wage-earners  is  drawing  to  an  end.  A  large  part  of 
the  task  of  reconstruction  ahead  of  us  will  consist  in 
the  working  out  of  schemes  for  a  more  permanent  type 
of  employment  and  for  a  direct  participation  of  the 
worker  in  the  pride,  profits  and  direction  of  the 
work.  Such  schemes  admit  of  wide  variations  be- 
tween a  mere  bonus  system,  a  periodic  tipping  of  the 
employees  to  prevent  their  striking,  and  a  real  and 
honest  co-partnery. 

In  the  latter  case  a  great  enterprise,  forced  to 
consider  its  "hands"  as  being  also  in  their  degree 
"heads,"  would  include  a  department  of  technical 
and  business  instruction  for  its  own  people.  From 
such  ideas  one  passes  very  readily  to  the  conception 
of  guild-managed  businesses,  in  which  the  factor  of 
capital  would  no  longer  stand  out  as  an  element 
distinct  from  and  contrasted  with  the  proprietorship 
of  the  workers.  One  sees  the  worker  as  an  active 
and  intelligent  helper  during  the  great  portion  of  his 
participation,  and  as  an  annuitant  and  perhaps,  if 

74 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

he   has   devised   economies   and   improvements,    a 
receiver  of  royalties  during  his  declining  years. 

And  concurrently  with  the  systematic  reconstruc- 
tion of  a  large  portion  of  our  industries  upon  these 
lines  there  will  have  to  be  a  vigorous  development  of 
the  attempts  that  are  already  being  made,  in  garden 
cities,  garden  suburbs,  and  the  like,  to  re-house  the 
mass  of  our  population  in  a  more  civilised  and  more 
agreeable  manner.  Probably  that  is  not  going  to 
pay  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  money-making 
business  man,  but  we  prosperous  people  have  to 
understand  that  there  are  things  more  important  and 
more  profitable  than  money-making,  and  we  have  to 
tax  ourselves  not  merely  in  money,  but  in  time,  care, 
and  effort  in  the  matter.  Half  the  money  that  goes 
out  of  England  to  Switzerland  and  the  Riviera 
ought  to  go  to  the  extremely  amusing  business  of 
clearing  up  ugly  corners  and  building  jolly  and 
convenient  workmen's  cottages — even  if  we  do  it  at 
a  loss.  It  is  part  of  our  discharge  for  the  leisure  and 
advantages  the  system  has  given  us,  part  of  that  just 
give  and  take,  over  and  above  the  solicitor's  and 
bargain-hunter's  and  money-lender's  conception  of 
justice,  upon  which  social  order  ultimately  rests. 
We  have  to  do  it  not  in  a  mood  of  patronage,  but  in 
a  mood  of  attentive  solicitude.  If  not  on  high 
grounds,  then  on  low  grounds  our  class  has  to  set  to 
work  and  make  those  other  classes  more  interested 
and  comfortable  and  contented.  It  is  what  we  are 
for.  It  is  quite  impossible  for  workmen  and  poor 

75 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

people  generally  to  plan  estates  and  arrange  their 
own  homes;  they  are  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  the 
wealthy  in  this  matter.  There  is  not  a  slum,  not  a 
hovel,  not  an  eyesore  upon  the  English  landscape  for 
which  some  well-off  owner  is  not  ultimately  to  be 
blamed  or  excused,  and  the  less  we  leave  of  such 
things  about  the  better  for  us  in  that  day  of  reck- 
oning between  class  and  class  which  now  draws  so 
near. 

It  is  as  plain  now  as  the  way  from  Calais  to  Paris 
that  if  the  owning  class  does  not  attend  to  these 
amenities  the  mass  of  the  people,  doing  its  best  to 
manage  the  thing  through  the  politicians,  presently 
will.  They  may, make  a  frightful  mess  of  it,  but 
that  will  never  bring  back  things  again  into  the  hands 
that  hold  them  and  neglect  them.  Their  time  will 
have  passed  for  ever. 

But  these  are  the  mere  opening  requirements  of 
this  hope  of  mine  of  a  quickened  social  consciousness 
among  the  more  fortunate  and  leisurely  section  of 
the  community.  I  believe  that  much  profounder 
changes  in  the  conditions  of  labour  are  possible  than 
those  I  have  suggested.  I  am  beginning  to  suspect 
that  scarcely  any  of  our  preconceptions  about  the 
way  work  must  be  done,  about  the  hours  of  work  and 
the  habits  of  work,  will  stand  an  exhaustive  scientific 
analysis.  It  is  at  least  conceivable  that  we  could 
get  much  of  the  work  that  has  to  be  done  to  keep  our 
community  going  in  far  more  toil-saving  and  life- 
saving  ways  than  we  follow  at  the  present  time.  So 

76 


THE   LABOUR   UNREST 

far  scientific  men  have  done  scarcely  anything  to 
estimate  under  what  conditions  a  man  works  best, 
does  most  work,  works  more  happily.  Suppose  it 
turns  out  to  be  the  case  that  a  man  always  following 
one  occupation  throughout  his  lifetime,  working 
regularly  day  after  day  for  so  many  hours,  as  most 
wage-earners  do  at  the  present  time,  does  not  do 
nearly  so  much  or  nearly  so  well  as  he  would  do  if 
he  followed  first  one  occupation  and  then  another, 
or  if  he  worked  as  hard  as  he  possibly  could  for  a 
definite  period  and  then  took  holiday?  I  suspect 
very  strongly,  indeed  I  am  convinced,  that  in  certain 
occupations,  teaching,  for  example,  or  surgery,  a 
man  begins  by  working  clumsily  and  awkwardly, 
that  his  interest  and  skill  rise  rapidly,  that  if  he  is 
really  well  suited  in  his  profession,  he  may  presently 
become  intensely  interested  and  capable  of  enormous 
quantities  of  his  very  best  work,  and  that  then  his 
interest  and  vigour  rapidly  decline.  I  am  disposed 
to  believe  that  this  is  true  of  most  occupations,  of 
coal-mining  or  engineering,  or  bricklaying  or  cotton- 
spinning.  The  thing  has  never  been  properly  thought 
about.  Our  civilisation  has  grown  up  in  a  hap- 
hazard kind  of  way,  and  it  has  been  convenient  to 
specialise  workers  and  employ  them  piecemeal.  But 
if  it  is  true  that  in  respect  of  any  occupation  a  man 
has  his  period  of  maximum  efficiency,  then  we  open 
up  a  whole  world  of  new  social  possibilities.  What 
we  really  want  from  a  man  for  our  social  welfare  in 
that  case  is  not  regular  continuing  work,  but  a  few 

77 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

strenuous  years  of  high-pressure  service.  We  can 
as  a  community  afford  to  keep  him  longer  at  educa- 
tion and  training  before  he  begins,  and  we  can  release 
him  with  a  pension  while  he  is  still  full  of  life  and 
the  capacity  for  enjoying  freedom.  But  obviously 
this  is  impossible  upon  any  basis  of  weekly  wages 
and  intermittent  employment;  we  must  be  handling 
affairs  in  some  much  more  comprehensive  way  than 
that  before  we  can  take  and  deal  with  the  working 
life  of  a  man  as  one  complete  whole. 

That  is  one  possibility  that  is  frequently  in  my 
thoughts  about  the  present  labour  crisis.  There  is 
another,  and  that  is  the  great  desirability  of  every 
class  in  the  community  having  a  practical  knowledge 
of  what  labour  means.  There  is  a  vast  amount  of 
work  which  either  is  now  or  is  likely  to  be  in  the 
future  within  the  domain  of  the  public  administration 
— road-making,  mining,  railway  work,  post-office  and 
telephone  work,  medical  work,  nursing,  a  consider- 
able amount  of  building,  for  example.  Why  should 
we  employ  people  to  do  the  bulk  of  these  things  at 
all?  Why  should  we  not  as  a  community  do  them 
ourselves  ?  Why,  in  other  words,  should  we  not  have 
a  labour  conscription  and  take  a  year  or  so  of  service 
from  everyone  in  the  community,  high  or  low?  I 
believe  this  would  be  of  enormous  moral  benefit  to 
our  strained  and  relaxed  community.  I  believe  that 
in  making  labour  a  part  of  everyone's  life  and  the 
whole  of  nobody's  life  lies  the  ultimate  solution  of 
these  industrial  difficulties. 

78 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

§5 

It  is  almost  a  national  boast  that  we  "muddle 
through"  our  troubles,  and  I  suppose  it  is  true  and 
to  our  credit  that  by  virtue  of  a  certain  kindliness  of 
temper,  a  humorous  willingness  to  make  the  best  of 
things,  and  an  entirely  amiable  forgetfulness,  we  do 
come  out  of  pressures  and  extremities  that  would 
smash  a  harder,  more  brittle  people,  only  a  little 
chipped  and  damaged.  And  it  is  quite  conceivable 
that  our  country  will,  in  a  measure,  survive  the  enor- 
mous stresses  of  labour  adjustment  that  are  now 
upon  us,  even  if  it  never  rises  to  any  heroic  struggle 
against  these  difficulties.  But  it  may  survive  as  a 
lesser  country,  as  an  impoverished  and  second-rate 
country.  It  will  certainly  do  no  more  than  that,  if 
in  any  part  of  the  world  there  is  to  be  found  a  people 
capable  of  taking  up  this  gigantic  question  in  a 
greater  spirit.  Perhaps  there  is  no  such  people,  and 
the  conflicts  and  muddles  before  us  will  be  world- 
wide. Or  suppose  that  it  falls  to  our  country  in  some 
strange  way  to  develop  a  new  courage  and  enterprise, 
and  to  be  the  first  to  go  forward  into  this  new  phase 
of  civilisation  I  foresee,  from  which  a  distinctive 
labouring  class,  a  class  that  is  of  expropriated  wage- 
earners,  will  have  almost  completely  disappeared. 

Now  hitherto  the  utmost  that  any  State,  over- 
taken by  social  and  economic  stresses,  has  ever 
achieved  in  the  way  of  adapting  itself  to  them  has 
been  no  more  than  patching. 

79 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Individuals  and  groups  and  trades  have  found 
themselves  in  imperfectly  apprehended  and  difficult 
times,  and  have  reluctantly  altered  their  ways  and 
ideas  piecemeal  under  pressure.  Sometimes  they 
have  succeeded  in  rubbing  along  upon  the  new  lines, 
and  sometimes  the  struggle  has  submerged  them,  but 
no  community  has  ever  yet  had  the  will  and  the  im- 
agination to  recast  and  radically  alter  its  social 
methods  as  a  whole.  The  idea  of  such  a  reconstruc- 
tion has  never  been  absent  from  human  thought  since 
the  days  of  Plato,  and  it  has  been  enormously  re- 
inforced by  the  spreading  material  successes  of 
modern  science,  successes  due  always  to  the  substi- 
tution of  analysis  and  reasoned  planning  for  trial 
and  the  rule  of  thumb.  But  it  has  never  yet  been  so 
believed  in  and  understood  as  to  render  any  real 
endeavour  to  reconstruct  possible.  The  experiment 
has  always  been  altogether  too  gigantic  for  the  avail- 
able faith  behind  it,  and  there  have  been  against  it 
the  fear  of  presumption,  the  interests  of  all  advan- 
taged people,  and  the  natural  sloth  of  humanity. 
We  do  but  emerge  now  from  a  period  of  deliberate 
happy-go-lucky  and  the  influence  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
who  came  near  raising  public  shiftlessness  to  the 
dignity  of  a  national  philosophy.  Everything  would 
adjust  itself — if  only  it  was  left  alone. 

Yet  some  things  there  are  that  cannot  be  done  by 
small  adjustments,  such  as  leaping  chasms  or  killing 
an  ox  or  escaping  from  the  roof  of  a  burning  house. 
You  have  to  decide  upon  a  certain  course  on  such 

80 


THE   LABOUR  UNREST 

occasions  and  maintain  a  continuous  movement. 
If  you  wait  on  the  burning  house  until  you  scorch 
and  then  turn  round  a  bit  or  move  away  a  yard  or 
so,  or  if  on  the  verge  of  a  chasm  you  move  a  little  in 
the  way  in  which  you  wish  to  go,  disaster  will  punish 
your  moderation.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
establishment  of  the  world's  work  upon  a  new  basis 
— and  that  and  no  less  is  what  this  Labour  Unrest 
demands  for  its  pacification — is  just  one  of  those 
large  alterations  which  will  never  be  made  by  the 
collectively  unconscious  activities  of  men,  by  com- 
petitions and  survival  and  the  higgling  of  the 
market.  Humanity  is  rebelling  against  the  continu- 
ing existence  of  a  labour  class  as  such,  and  I  can  see 
no  way  by  which  our  present  method  of  weekly 
wages  employment  can  change  by  imperceptible  in- 
crements into  a  method  of  salary  and  pension — for 
it  is  quite  evident  that  only  by  reaching  that  shall 
we  reach  the  end  of  these  present  discontents.  The 
change  has  to  be  made  on  a  comprehensive  scale  or 
not  at  all.  We  need  nothing  less  than  a  national 
plan  of  social  development  if  the  thing  is  to  be 
achieved. 

Now  that,  I  admit,  is,  as  the  Americans  say,  a 
large  proposition.  But  we  are  living  in  a  time  of 
more  and  more  comprehensive  plans,  and  the  mere 
fact  that  no  scheme  so  extensive  has  ever  been  tried 
before  is  no  reason  at  all  why  we  should  not  consider 
one.  We  think  nowadays  quite  serenely  of  schemes 
for  the  treatment  of  the  nation's  health  as  one 

81 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

whole,  where  our  fathers  considered  illness  as  a 
blend  of  accident  with  special  providences;  we  have 
systematised  the  community's  water  supply,  educa- 
tion, and  all  sorts  of  once  chaotic  services,  and 
Germany  and  our  own  infinite  higgledy-piggledy 
discomfort  and  ugliness  have  brought  home  to  us  at 
last  even  the  possibility  of  planning  the  extension  of 
our  towns  and  cities.  It  is  only  another  step  up- 
ward in  scale  to  plan  out  new,  more  tolerable  condi- 
tions of  employment  for  every  sort  of  worker  and  to 
organise  the  transition  from  our  present  disorder. 

The  essential  difficulty  between  the  employer  and 
the  statesman  in  the  consideration  of  this  problem 
is  the  difference  in  the  scope  of  their  view.  The  em- 
ployer's concern  with  the  man  who  does  his  work  is 
day-long  or  week-long;  the  statesman's  is  life-long. 
The  conditions  of  private  enterprise  and  modern 
competition  oblige  the  employer  to  think  only  of  the 
worker  as  a  hand,  who  appears  and  does  his  work 
and  draws  his  wages  and  vanishes  again.  Only  such 
strikes  as  we  have  had  during  the  past  year  will 
rouse  him  from  that  attitude  of  mind.  The  states- 
man at  the  other  extremity  has  to  consider  the 
worker  as  a  being  with  a  beginning,  a  middle,  an 
end — and  offspring.  He  can  consider  all  these  pos- 
sibilities of  deferring  employment  and  making  the 
toil  of  one  period  of  life  provide  for  the  leisure  and 
freedom  of  another,  which  are  necessarily  entirely 
out  of  the  purview  of  an  employer  pure  and  simple. 
And  I  find  it  hard  to  see  how  we  can  reconcile  the 

83 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

intermittency  of  competitive  employment  with  the 
unremitting  demands  of  a  civilised  life  except  by  the 
intervention  of  the  State  or  of  some  public  organisa- 
tion capable  of  taking  very  wide  views  between  the 
business  organiser  on  the  one  hand  and  the  subordi- 
nate worker  on  the  other.  On  the  one  hand  we  need 
some  broader  handling  of  business  than  is  possible 
in  the  private  adventure  of  the  solitary  proprietor 
or  the  single  company,  and  on  the  other  some  more 
completely  organised  development  of  the  collective 
bargain.  We  have  to  bring  the  directive  intelligence 
of  a  concern  into  an  organic  relation  with  the  con- 
ception of  the  national  output  as  a  whole,  and  either 
through  a  trade  union  or  a  guild,  or  some  expansion 
of  a  trade  union,  we  have  to  arrange  a  secure,  con- 
tinuous income  for  the  worker,  to  be  received  not 
directly  as  wages  from  an  employer,  but  intermedi- 
ately through  the  organisation.  We  need  a  census 
of  our  national  production,  a  more  exhaustive  esti- 
mate of  our  resources,  and  an  entirely  more  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  maximum  labour 
efficiency.  One  turns  to  the  State.  .  .  .  And  it  is 
at  this  point  that  the  heart  of  the  patriotic  English- 
man sinks,  because  it  is  our  national  misfortune  that 
all  the  accidents  of  public  life  have  conspired  to 
retard  the  development  of  just  that  body  of  knowl- 
edge, just  that  scientific  breadth  of  imagination  which 
is  becoming  a  vital  necessity  for  the  welfare  of  a 
modern  civilised  community. 

We  are  caught  short  of  scientific  men  just  as  in 

83 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  event  of  a  war  with  Germany  we  shall  almost 
certainly  be  caught  short  of  scientific  sailors  and 
soldiers.  You  cannot  make  that  sort  of  thing  to 
order  in  a  crisis.  Scientific  education — and  more 
particularly  the  scientific  education  of  our  owning 
and  responsible  classes — has  been  crippled  by  the 
bitter  jealousy  of  the  classical  teachers  who  domi- 
nate our  universities,  by  the  fear  and  hatred  of  the 
Established  Church,  which  still  so  largely  controls 
our  upper-class  schools,  and  by  the  entire  lack  of 
understanding  and  support  on  the  part  of  those 
able  barristers  and  financiers  who  rule  our  political 
life.  Science  has  been  left  more  and  more  to  men 
of  modest  origin  and  narrow  outlook,  and  now  we 
are  beginning  to  pay  in  internal  dissensions,  and 
presently  we  may  have  to  pay  in  national  humilia- 
tion for  this  almost  organised  rejection  of  stimulus 
and  power. 

But  however  thwarted  and  crippled  our  public 
imagination  may  be,  we  have  still  got  to  do  the  best 
we  can  with  this  situation;  we  have  to  take  as  com- 
prehensive views  as  we  can,  and  to  attempt  as  com- 
prehensive a  method  of  handling  as  our  party-ridden 
State  permits.  In  theory  I  am  a  Socialist,  and  were 
I  theorising  about  some  nation  in  the  air  I  would  say 
that  all  the  great  productive  activities  and  all  the 
means  of  communication  should  be  national  con- 
cerns and  be  run  as  national  services.  But  our  State 
is  peculiarly  incapable  of  such  functions;  at  the 
present  time  it  cannot  even  produce  a  postage-stamp 

84 


THE  LABOUR   UNREST 

that  will  stick;  and  the  type  of  official  it  would  prob- 
ably evolve  for  industrial  organisation,  slowly  but 
unsurely,  would  be  a  maddening  combination  of  the 
district  visitor  and  the  boy  clerk.  It  is  to  the  inde- 
pendent people  of  some  leisure  and  resource  in  the 
community  that  one  has  at  last  to  appeal  for  such 
large  efforts  and  understandings  as  our  present  situa- 
tion demands.  In  the  default  of  our  public  services, 
there  opens  an  immense  opportunity  for  voluntary 
effort.  Deference  to  our  official  leaders  is  absurd; 
it  is  a  time  when  men  must,  as  the  phrase  goes, 
"come  forward." 

We  want  a  National  plan  for  our  social  and  eco- 
nomic development  which  everyone  may  understand 
and  which  will  serve  as  a  unifying  basis  for  all  our 
social  and  political  activities.  Such  a  plan  is  not  to 
be  flung  out  hastily  by  an  irresponsible  writer.  It 
can  only  come  into  existence  as  the  outcome  of  a 
wide  movement  of  inquiry  and  discussion.  My 
business  in  these  pages  has  been  not  prescription  but 
diagnosis.  I  hold  it  to  be  the  clear  duty  of  every 
intelligent  person  in  the  country  to  do  his  utmost 
to  learn  about  these  questions  of  economic  and  social 
organisation  and  to  work  them  out  to  conclusions 
and  a  purpose.  We  have  come  to  a  phase  in  our 
affairs  when  the  only  alternative  to  a  great,  deliberate 
renascence  of  will  and  understanding  is  national 
disorder  and  decay. 
7 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

§6 

I  have  attempted  a  diagnosis  of  this  aspect  of  our 
national  situation.  I  have  pointed  out  that  nearly 
all  the  social  forces  of  our  time  seem  to  be  in  con- 
spiracy to  bring  about  the  disappearance  of  a  labour 
class  as  such  and  the  rearrangement  of  our  work  and 
industry  upon  a  new  basis.  That  rearrangement 
demands  an  unprecedented  national  effort  and  the 
production  of  an  adequate  National  Plan.  Failing 
that,  we  seem  doomed  to  a  period  of  chronic  social 
conflict  and  possibly  even  of  frankly  revolutionary 
outbreaks  that  may  destroy  us  altogether  or  leave 
us  only  a  dwarfed  and  enfeebled  nation.  .  .  . 

And  before  we  can  develop  that  National  Plan  and 
the  effective  realisation  of  such  a  plan  that  is  needed 
to  save  us  from  that  fate  two  things  stand  imme- 
diately before  us  to  be  done,  unavoidable  prelimi- 
naries to  that  more  comprehensive  work.  The  first 
of  these  is  the  restoration  of  representative  govern- 
ment, and  the  second  a  renascence  of  our  public 
thought  about  political  and  social  things. 

As  I  have  already  suggested,  a  main  factor  in  our 
present  national  inability  to  deal  with  this  profound 
and  increasing  social  disturbance  is  the  entirely  un- 
representative and  unbusinesslike  nature  of  our 
parliamentary  government. 

It  is  to  a  quite  extraordinary  extent  a  thing  apart 
from  our  national  life.  It  becomes  more  and  more 
so.  To  go  into  the  House  of  Commons  is  to  go  aside 

86 


THE   LABOUR  UNREST 

out  of  the  general  stream  of  the  community's  vitality 
into  a  corner  where  little  is  learnt  and  much  is  con- 
cocted, into  a  specialised  Assembly  which  is  at  once 
inattentive  to  and  monstrously  influential  in  our 
affairs.  There  was  a  period  when  the  debates  in  the 
House  of  Commons  were  an  integral,  almost  a  domi- 
nant, part  of  our  national  thought,  when  its  speeches 
were  read  over  in  tens  of  thousands  of  homes,  and 
a  large  and  sympathetic  public  followed  the  details 
of  every  contested  issue.  Now  a  newspaper  that 
dared  to  fill  its  columns  mainly  with  parliamentary 
debates,  with  a  full  report  of  the  trivialities,  the 
academic  points,  the  little  familiar  jokes,  and  en- 
tirely insincere  pleadings  which  occupy  that  gather- 
ing would  court  bankruptcy. 

This  diminishing  actuality  of  our  political  life  is  a 
matter  of  almost  universal  comment  to-day.  But  it 
is  extraordinary  how  much  of  that  comment  is  made 
in  a  tone  of  hopeless  dissatisfaction,  how  rarely  it  is 
associated  with  any  will  to  change  a  state  of  affairs 
that  so  largely  stultifies  our  national  purpose.  And 
yet  the  causes  of  our  present  political  ineptitude  are 
fairly  manifest,  and  a  radical  and  effective  recon- 
struction is  well  within  the  wit  of  man. 

All  causes  and  all  effects  in  our  complex  modern 
State  are  complex,  but  in  this  particular  matter  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  key  to  the  difficulty  lies 
in  the  crudity  and  simplicity  of  our  method  of 
election,  a  method  which  reduces  our  apparent  free 
choice  of  rulers  to  a  ridiculous  selection  between 

87 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

undesirable  alternatives,  and  hands  our  whole  public 
life  over  to  the  specialised  manipulator.  Our  House 
of  Commons  could  scarcely  misrepresent  us  more  if 
it  was  appointed  haphazard  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain 
or  selected  by  lot  from  among  the  inhabitants  of 
Netting  Hill.  Election  of  representatives  in  one- 
member  local  constituencies  by  a  single  vote  gives  a 
citizen  practically  no  choice  beyond  the  candidates 
appointed  by  the  two  great  party  organisations  in  the 
State.  It  is  an  electoral  system  that  forbids  abso- 
lutely any  vote  splitting  or  any  indication  of  shades 
of  opinion.  The  presence  of  more  than  two  candi- 
dates introduces  an  altogether  unmanageable  com- 
plication, and  the  voter  is  at  once  reduced  to  voting 
not  to  secure  the  return  of  the  perhaps  less  hopeful 
candidate  he  likes,  but  to  ensure  the  rejection  of  the 
candidate  he  most  dislikes.  So  the  nimble  wire- 
puller slips  in.  In  Great  Britain  we  do  not  have 
Elections  any  more;  we  have  Rejections.  What 
really  happens  at  a  general  election  is  that  the  party 
organisations — obscure  and  secretive  conclaves  with 
entirely  mysterious  funds — appoint  about  1,200  men 
to  be  our  rulers,  and  all  that  we,  we  so-called  self- 
governing  people,  are  permitted  to  do  is,  in  a  mud- 
dled, angry  way,  to  strike  off  the  names  of  about  half 
of  these  selected  gentlemen. 

Take  almost  any  member  of  the  present  Govern- 
ment and  consider  his  case.  You  may  credit  him 
with  a  life-long  industrious  intention  to  get  there,  but 
ask  yourself  what  is  this  man's  distinction,  and  for 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

what  great  thing  in  our  national  life  does  he  stand? 
By  the  complaisance  of  our  party  machinery  he  was 
able  to  present  himself  to  a  perplexed  constituency 
as  the  only  possible  alternative  to  Conservatism  and 
Tariff  Reform,  and  so  we  have  him.  And  so  we  have 
most  of  his  colleagues. 

Now  such  a  system  of  representation  is  surely  a 
system  to  be  destroyed  at  any  cost,  because  it  stifles 
our  national  discussion  and  thwarts  our  national  will. 
And  we  can  leave  no  possible  method  of  alteration 
untried.  It  is  not  rational  that  a  great  people  should 
be  baffled  by  the  mere  mechanical  degeneration  of 
an  electoral  method  too  crudely  conceived.  There 
exist  alternatives,  and  to  these  alternatives  we  must 
resort.  Since  John  Stuart  Mill  first  called  attention 
to  the  importance  of  the  matter  there  has  been  a 
systematic  study  of  the  possible  working  of  electoral 
methods,  and  it  is  now  fairly  proved  that  in  propor- 
tional representation,  with  large  constituencies  re- 
turning each  many  members,  there  is  to  be  found  a 
way  of  escape  from  this  disastrous  embarrassment  of 
our  public  business  by  the  party  wire-puller  and  the 
party  nominee. 

I  will  not  dwell  upon  the  particulars  of  the  pro- 
portional representation  system  here.  There  exists 
an  active  society  which  has  organised  the  education 
of  the  public  in  the  details  of  the  proposal.  Suffice  it 
that  it  does  give  a  method  by  which  a  voter  may  vote 
with  confidence  for  the  particular  man  he  prefers, 
with  no  fear  whatever  that  his  vote  will  be  wasted 

89 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

in  the  event  of  that  man's  chance  being  hopeless. 
There  is  a  method  by  which  the  order  of  the  voter's 
subsequent  preference  is  effectively  indicated.  That 
is  all,  but  see  how  completely  it  modifies  the  nature 
of  an  election.  Instead  of  a  hampered  choice  be- 
tween two,  you  have  a  free  choice  between  many. 
Such  a  change  means  a  complete  alteration  in  the 
quality  of  public  life. 

The  present  immense  advantage  of  the  party 
nominee — which  is  the  root  cause,  which  is  almost 
the  sole  cause  of  all  our  present  political  ineptitude — 
would  disappear.  He  would  be  quite  unable  to  oust 
any  well-known  and  representative  independent 
candidate  who  chose  to  stand  against  him.  There 
would  be  an  immediate  alteration  in  type  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  the  place  of  these  specialists 
in  political  getting-on  there  would  be  few  men  who 
had  not  already  gained  some  intellectual  and  moral 
hold  upon  the  community;  they  would  already  be 
outstanding  and  distinguished  men  before  they  came 
to  the  work  of  government.  Great  sections  of  our 
national  life,  science,  art,  literature,  education, 
engineering,  manufacture,  would  cease  to  be  under- 
represented,  or  misrepresented,  by  the  energetic 
barrister  and  political  specialist,  and  our  Legislature 
would  begin  to  serve,  as  we  have  now  such  urgent 
need  of  its  serving,  as  the  means  and  instrument  of 
that  national  conference  upon  the  social  outlook 
of  which  we  stand  in  need. 

And  it  is  to  the  need  and  nature  of  that  Conference 

90 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

that  I  would  devote  myself.  I  do  not  mean  by  the 
word  Conference  any  gathering  of  dull  and  formal 
and  inattentive  people  in  this  dusty  hall  or  that,  with 
a  jaded  audience  and  intermittently  active  reporters, 
such  as  this  word  may  conjure  up  to  some  imagina- 
tions. I  mean  an  earnest  direction  of  attention  in 
all  parts  of  the  country  to  this  necessity  for  a  studied 
and  elaborated  project  of  conciliation  and  social  co- 
operation. We  cannot  afford  to  leave  such  things  to 
specialised  politicians  and  self-appointed,  self-seeking 
"experts "  any  longer.  A  modern  community  has  to 
think  out  its  problems  as  a  whole  and  co-operate  as 
a  whole  in  their  solution.  We  have  to  bring  all  our 
national  life  into  this  discussion  of  the  National  Plan 
before  us,  and  not  simply  newspapers  and  periodicals 
and  books,  but  pulpit  and  college  and  school  have 
to  bear  their  part  in  it.  And  in  that  particular  I 
would  appeal  to  the  schools,  because  there  more 
than  anywhere  else  is  the  permanent  quickening -of 
our  national  imagination  to  be  achieved. 

We  want  to  have  our  young  people  filled  with  a 
new  realisation  that  History  is  not  over,  that  nothing 
is  settled,  and  that  the  supreme  dramatic  phase  in 
the  story  of  England  has  still  to  come.  It  was  not  in 
the  Norman  Conquest,  not  in  the  flight  of  King 
James  II.  nor  the  overthrow  of  Napoleon;  it  is  here 
and  now.  It  falls  to  them  to  be  actors  not  in  a 
reminiscent  pageant  but  a  living  conflict,  and  the 
sooner  they  are  prepared  to  take  their  part  in  that 
the  better  our  Empire  will  acquit  itself.  How  ab- 

91 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

surd  is  the  preoccupation  of  our  schools  and  colleges 
with  the  little  provincialisms  of  our  past  history  be- 
fore A.D.  1800!  "No  current  politics,"  whispers  the 
schoolmaster,  "no  religion — except  the  coldest  for- 
malities. Some  parent  might  object"  And  he  pours 
into  our  country  every  year  a  fresh  supply  of  gentle- 
manly cricketing  youths,  gapingly  unprepared — un- 
less they  have  picked  up  a  broad  generalisation  or  so 
from  some  surreptitious  Socialist  pamphlet — for  the 
immense  issues  they  must  control,  and  that  are  alto- 
gether uncontrollable  if  they  fail  to  control  them. 
The  universities  do  scarcely  more  for  our  young 
men.  All  this  has  to  be  altered,  and  altered  vigor- 
ously and  soon,  if  our  country  is  to  accomplish  its 
destinies.  Our  schools  and  colleges  exist  for  no  other 
purpose  than  to  give  our  youths  a  vision  of  the  world 
and  of  their  duties  and  possibilities  in  the  world. 
We  can  no  longer  afford  to  have  them  the  last  pre- 
serves of  an  elderly  orthodoxy  and  the  last  repository 
of  a  decaying  gift  of  superseded  tongues.  They  are 
needed  too  urgently  to  make  our  leaders  leader-like 
and  to  sustain  the  active  understandings  of  the  race. 
And  from  the  labour  class  itself  we  are  also  justi- 
fied in  demanding  a  far  more  effectual  contribution 
to  the  National  Conference  than  it  is  making  at  the 
present  time.  Mere  eloquent  apologies  for  distrust, 
mere  denunciations  of  Capitalism  and  appeals  for  a 
Socialism  as  featureless  as  smoke,  are  unsatisfactory 
when  one  regards  them  as  the  entire  contribution  of 
the  ascendant  worker  to  the  discussion  of  the  national 

92 


THE  LABOUR  UNREST 

future.  The  labour  thinker  has  to  become  definite 
in  his  demands  and  clearer  upon  the  give  and  take 
that  will  be  necessary  before  they  can  be  satisfied. 
He  has  to  realise  rather  more  generously  than  he  has 
done  so  far  the  enormous  moral  difficulty  there  is  in 
bringing  people  who  have  been  prosperous  and  at  an 
advantage  all  their  lives  to  the  pitch  of  even  con- 
templating a  social  reorganisation  that  may  minimise 
or  destroy  their  precedence.  We  have  all  to  think, 
to  think  hard  and  think  generously,  and  there  is 
not  a  man  in  England  to-day,  even  though  his  hands 
are  busy  at  work,  whose  brain  may  not  be  helping  in 
this  great  task  of  social  rearrangement  which  lies 
before  us  all. 


SOCIAL  PANACEAS 
(June,  1912) 

To  have  followed  the  frequent  discussions  of  the 
Labour  Unrest  in  the  Press  is  to  have  learnt  quite  a 
lot  about  the  methods  of  popular  thought.  And 
among  other  things  I  see  now  much  better  than  I  did 
why  patent  medicines  are  so  popular.  It  is  clear  that 
as  a  community  we  are  far  too  impatient  of  detail 
and  complexity,  we  want  overmuch  to  simplify,  we 
clamour  for  panaceas,  we  are  a  collective  invitation 
to  quacks. 

Our  situation  is  an  intricate  one,  it  does  not  admit 
of  a  solution  neatly  done  up  in  a  word  or  a  phrase. 
Yet  so  powerful  is  this  wish  to  simplify  that  it  is 
difficult  to  make  it  clear  that  one  is  not  oneself  a 
panacea-monger.  One  writes  and  people  read  a 
little  inattentively  and  more  than  a  little  impatiently, 
until  one  makes  a  positive  proposal.  Then  they 
jump.  "So  that's  your  Remedy!"  they  say.  "How 
absurdly  inadequate !"  For  example,  I  was  privileged 
to  take  part  in  one  such  discussion  in  1912,  and 
among  other  things  in  my  diagnosis  of  the  situation 
I  pointed  out  the  extreme  mischief  done  to  our  public 
life  by  the  futility  of  our  electoral  methods.  They 

94 


SOCIAL  PANACEAS 

make  our  whole  public  life  forensic  and  ineffectual, 
and  I  pointed  out  that  this  evil  effect,  which  vitiates 
our  whole  national  life,  could  be  largely  remedied  by 
an  infinitely  better  voting  system  known  as  Propor- 
tional Representation.  Thereupon  the  Westminster 
Gazette  declared  in  tones  of  pity  and  contempt  that 
it  was  no  Remedy — and  dismissed  me.  It  would  be 
as  intelligent  to  charge  a  doctor  who  pushed  back  the 
crowd  about  a  broken-legged  man  in  the  street  with 
wanting  to  heal  the  limb  by  giving  the  sufferer  air. 

The  task  before  our  community,  the  task  of  re- 
organising labour  on  a  basis  broader  than  that  of 
employment  for  daily  or  weekly  wages,  is  one  of  huge 
complexity,  and  it  is  as  entirely  reasonable  as  it  is 
entirely  preliminary  to  clean  and  modernise  to  the 
utmost  our  representative  and  legislative  machinery. 

It  is  remarkable  how  dominant  is  this  disposition 
to  get  a  phrase,  a  word,  a  simple  recipe,  for  an  under- 
taking so  vast  in  reality  that  for  all  the  rest  of  our 
lives  a  large  part  of  the  activities  of  us,  forty  million 
people,  will  be  devoted  to  its  partial  accomplishment. 
In  the  presence  of  very  great  issues  people  become 
impatient  and  irritated,  as  they  would  not  allow 
themselves  to  be  irritated  by  far  more  limited  prob- 
lems. Nobody  in  his  senses  expects  a  panacea  for 
the  comparatively  simple  and  trivial  business  of 
playing  chess.  Nobody  wants  to  be  told  to  "rely 
wholly  upon  your  pawns,"  or  "never,  never  move 
your  rook";  nobody  clamours  "give  me  a  third 
knight  and  all  will  be  well " ;  but  that  is  exactly  what 

95 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

everybody  seems  to  be  doing  in  our  present  discus- 
sion. And  as  another  aspect  of  the  same  impatience 
I  note  the  disposition  to  clamour  against  all  sorts  of 
necessary  processes  in  the  development  of  a  civilisa- 
tion. For  example,  I  read  over  and  over  again 
of  the  failure  of  representative  government,  and 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  I  find  that  this  amounts  to 
a  cry  against  any  sort  of  representative  government. 
It  is  perfectly  true  that  our  representative  institu- 
tions do  not  work  well  and  need  a  vigorous  over- 
hauling, but  while  I  find  scarcely  any  support  for 
such  a  revision,  the  air  is  full  of  vague  dangerous 
demands  for  aristocracy,  for  oligarchy,  for  autocracy. 
It  is  like  a  man  who  jumps  out  of  his  automobile 
because  he  has  burst  a  tyre,  refuses  a  proffered 
Stepney,  and  bawls  passionately  for  anything — for  a 
four-wheeler,  or  a  donkey,  so  long  as  he  can  be  free 
from  that  exploded  mechanism.  There  are  evidently 
quite  a  considerable  number  of  people  in  this  country 
who  would  welcome  a  tyrant  at  the  present  time,  a 
strong,  silent,  cruel,  imprisoning,  executing,  melo- 
dramatic sort  of  person,  who  would  somehow  manage 
everything  while  they  went  on — being  silly.  I  find 
that  form  of  impatience  cropping  up  everywhere.  I 
hear  echoes  of  Mr.  Blatchford's  Wanted,  a  Man,  and 
we  may  yet  see  a  General  Boulanger  prancing  in 
our  streets.  There  never  was  a  more  foolish  cry. 
It  is  not  a  man  we  want,  but  just  exactly  as  many 
million  men  as  there  are  in  Great  Britain  at  the  pres- 
ent time,  and  it  is  you,  the  reader,  and  I,  and  the 

96 


SOCIAL  PANACEAS 

rest  of  us  who  must  together  go  on  with  the  perennial 
task  of  saving  the  country  by  firstly,  doing  our  own 
jobs  just  as  well  as  ever  we  can,  and  secondly — and 
this  is  really  just  as  important  as  firstly — doing  our 
utmost  to  grasp  our  national  purpose,  doing  our 
utmost,  that  is,  to  develop  and  carry  out  our  national 
plan.  It  is  Everyman  who  must  be  the  saviour  of 
the  State  in  a  modern  community;  we  cannot  shift 
our  share  in  the  burthen ;  and  here  again,  I  think,  is 
something  that  may  well  be  underlined  and  empha- 
sised. At  present  our  "secondly"  is  unduly  sub- 
ordinated to  our  "firstly";  our  game  is  better  indi- 
vidually than  collectively ;  we  are  like  a  football  team 
that  passes  badly,  and  our  need  is  not  nearly  so 
much  to  change  the  players  as  to  broaden  their  style. 
And  this  brings  me,  in  a  spirit  entirely  antagonistic, 
up  against  Mr.  Galsworthy's  suggestion  of  an  auto- 
cratic revolution  in  the  methods  of  our  public  schools. 
But  before  I  go  on  to  that,  let  me  first  notice  a  still 
more  comprehensive  cry  that  has  been  heard  again 
and  again  in  this  discussion,  and  that  is  the  alleged 
failure  of  education  generally.  There  is  never  any 
remedial  suggestion  made  with  this  particular  out- 
cry; it  is  merely  a  gust  of  abuse  and  insult  for  schools, 
and  more  particularly  board  schools,  carrying  with  it 
a  half-hearted  implication  that  they  should  be  closed, 
and  then  the  contribution  concludes.  Now  there  is 
no  outcry  at  the  present  time  more  unjust  or — ex- 
cept for  the  Wanted,  a  Man  clamour — more  foolish. 
No  doubt  our  educational  resources,  like  most  other 

97 


SOCIAL  FORCES^  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

things,  fall  far  short  of  perfection,  but  of  all  this 
imperfection  the  elementary  schools  are  least  im- 
perfect ;  and  I  would  almost  go  so  far  as  to  say  that, 
considering  the  badness  of  their  material,  the  huge, 
clumsy  classes  they  have  to  deal  with,  the  poorness 
of  their  directive  administration,  their  bad  pay  and 
uncertain  outlook,  the  elementary  teachers  of  this 
country  are  amazingly  efficient.  And  it  is  not 
simply  that  they  are  good  under  their  existing  con- 
ditions, but  that  this  service  has  been  made  out  of 
nothing  whatever  in  the  course  of  scarcely  forty 
years.  An  educational  system  to  cover  an  Empire 
is  not  a  thing  that  can  be  got  for  the  asking,  it  is 
not  even  to  be  got  for  the  paying,  it  has  to  be  grown ; 
and  in  the  beginning  it  is  bound  to  be  thin,  ragged, 
forced,  crammy,  text-bookish,  superficial,  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  As  reasonable  to  complain  that  the  chil- 
dren born  last  year  were  immature.  A  little  army 
of  teachers  does  not  flash  into  being  at  the  passing  of 
an  Education  Act.  Not  even  an  organisation  for 
training  those  teachers  comes  to  anything  like  satis- 
factory working  order  for  many  years,  without  con- 
sidering the  delays  and  obstructions  that  have  been 
caused  by  the  bickerings  and  bitterness  of  the  various 
Christian  Churches.  So  that  it  is  not  the  failure  of 
elementary  education  we  have  really  to  consider,  but 
the  continuance  and  extension  of  its  already  almost 
miraculous  results. 

And  when  it  comes  to  the  education  of  the  ruling 
and  directing  classes,  there  is  kindred,  if  lesser  reason, 

98 


SOCIAL  PANACEAS 

for  tempering  zeal  with  patience.  This  upper  por- 
tion of  our  educational  organisation  needs  urgently 
to  be  bettered,  but  it  is  not  to  be  bettered  by  trying 
to  find  an  archangel  who  will  better  it  dictatorially. 
For  the  good  of  our  souls  there  are  no  such  beings  to 
relieve  us  of  our  collective  responsibility.  It  is  clear 
that  appointments  in  this  field  need  not  only  far 
more  care  and  far  more  insistence  upon  creative 
power  than  has  been  shown  in  the  past,  but  for  the 
rest  we  have  to  do  with  the  men  we  have  and  the 
schools  we  have.  We  cannot  have  an  educational 
purge,  if  only  because  we  have  not  the  new  men 
waiting.  Here  again  the  need  is  not  impatience,  not 
revolution,  but  a  sustained  and  penetrating  criticism, 
a  steadfast,  continuous  urgency  towards  effort  and 
well-planned  reconstruction  and  efficiency. 

And  as  a  last  example  of  the  present  hysterical 
disposition  to  scrap  things  before  they  have  been 
fairly  tried  is  the  outcry  against  examinations,  which 
has  done  so  much  to  take  the  keenness  off  the  edge 
of  school  work  in  the  last  few  years.  Because  a 
great  number  of  examiners  chosen  haphazard  turned 
out  to  be  negligent  and  incompetent  as  examiners, 
because  their  incapacity  created  a  cynical  trade  in 
cramming,  a  great  number  of  people  have  come  to  the 
conclusion,  just  as  examinations  are  being  improved 
into  efficiency,  that  all  examinations  are  bad.  In 
particular  that  excellent  method  of  bringing  new 
blood  and  new  energy  into  the  public  services  and 
breaking  up  official  gangs  and  cliques,  the  com- 

99 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

petitive  examination  system,  has  been  discredited, 
and  the  wire-puller  and  the  influential  person  are 
back  again  tampering  with  a  steadily  increasing  pro- 
portion of  appointments.  .  .  . 

But  I  have  written  enough  of  this  impatience, 
which  is,  as  it  were,  merely  the  passion  for  recon- 
struction losing  its  head  and  defeating  its  own  ends. 
There  is  no  hope  for  us  outside  ourselves.  No  violent 
changes,  no  Napoleonic  saviours  can  carry  on  the 
task  of  building  the  Great  State,  the  civilised  State 
that  rises  out  of  our  disorders.  That  is  for  us  to 
do,  all  of  us  and  each  one  of  us.  We  have  to  think 
clearly,  and  study  and  consider  and  reconsider  our 
ideas  about  public  things  to  the  very  utmost  of  our 
possibilities.  We  have  to  clarify  our  views  and 
express  them  and  do  all  we  can  to  stir  up  thinking 
and  effort  in  those  about  us. 

I  know  it  would  be  more  agreeable  for  all  of  us 
if  we  could  have  some  small  pill-like  remedy  for  all 
the  troubles  of  the  State,  and  take  it  and  go  on  just 
as  we  are  going  now.  But,  indeed,  to  say  a  word  for 
that  idea  would  be  a  treason.  We  are  the  State, 
and  there  is  no  other  way  to  make  it  better  than  to 
give  it  the  service  of  our  lives.  Just  in  the  measure 
of  the  aggregate  of  our  devotions  and  the  elaborated 
and  criticised  sanity  of  our  public  proceedings  will 
the  world  mend. 

I  gather  from  a  valuable  publication  called  Secret 
Remedies,  which  analyses  many  popular  cures,  that 
this  hasty  passion  for  simplicity,  for  just  one  thing 

zoo 


SOCIAL  PANACEAS 

that  will  settle  the  whole  trouble,  can  carry  people 
to  a  level  beyond  an  undivided  trust  in  something 
warranted  in  a  bottle.  They  are  ready  to  put  their 
faith  in  what  amounts  to  practically  nothing  in  a 
bottle.  And  just  at  present,  while  a  number  of 
excellent  people  of  the  middle  class  think  that  only 
a  "man"  is  wanted  and  all  will  be  well  with  us,  there 
is  a  considerable  wave  of  hopefulness  among  the 
working  class  in  favour  of  a  weak  solution  of  nothing, 
which  is  offered  under  the  attractive  label  of  Syndi- 
calism. So  far  I  have  been  able  to  discuss  the  present 
labour  situation  without  any  use  of  this  empty  word, 
but  when  one  finds  it  cropping  up  in  every  other 
article  on  the  subject,  it  becomes  advisable  to  point 
out  what  Syndicalism  is  not.  And  incidentally  it 
may  enable  me  to  make  clear  what  Socialism  in 
the  broader  sense,  constructive  Socialism,  that  is  to 
say,  is. 
8 


SYNDICALISM   OR   CITIZENSHIP? 

"Is  a  railway  porter  a  railway  porter  first  and  a 
man  afterwards,  or  is  he  a  man  first  and  incidentally 
a  railway  porter?" 

That  is  the  issue  between  this  tawdrification  of 
trade  unionism  which  is  called  Syndicalism,  and  the 
ideals  of  that  Great  State,  that  great  commonweal, 
towards  which  the  constructive  forces  in  our  civilisa- 
tion tend.  Are  we  to  drift  on  to  a  disastrous  in- 
tensification of  our  present  specialisation  of  labour  as 
labour,  or  are  we  to  set  to  work  steadfastly  upon  a 
vast  social  reconstruction  which  will  close  this  widen- 
ing breach  and  rescue  our  community  from  its  present 
dependence  upon  the  reluctant  and  presently  in- 
surgent toil  of  a  wages-earning  proletariat?  Re- 
garded as  a  project  of  social  development,  Syndical- 
ism is  ridiculous;  regarded  as  an  illuminating  and 
unintentionally  ironical  complement  to  the  implicit 
theories  of  our  present  social  order,  it  is  worthy  of 
close  attention.  The  dream  of  the  Syndicalist  is  an 
impossible  social  fragmentation.  The  transport  ser- 
vice is  to  be  a  democratic  republic,  the  mines  are  to 
be  a  democratic  republic,  every  great  industry  is  to 
be  a  democratic  republic  within  the  State;  our  com- 

IO2 


SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP? 

munity  is  to  become  a  conflict  of  interwoven  govern- 
ments of  workers,  incapable  of  progressive  changes  of 
method  or  of  extension  or  transmutation  of  function, 
the  whole  being  of  a  man  is  to  lie  within  his  industrial 
specialisation,  and,  upon  lines  of  causation  not  made 
clear,  wages  are  to  go  on  rising  and  hours  of  work  are 
to  go  on  falling.  .  .  .  There  the  mind  halts,  blinded 
by  the  too  dazzling  vistas  of  an  unimaginative  mil- 
lennium. And  the  way  to  this,  one  gathers,  is  by 
striking — persistent,  destructive  striking — until  it 
comes  about. 

Such  is  Syndicalism,  the  cheap  Labour  Panacea, 
to  which  the  more  passionate  and  less  intelligent 
portion  of  the  younger  workers,  impatient  of  the 
large  constructive  developments  of  modern  Socialism, 
drifts  steadily.  It  is  the  direct  and  logical  reaction 
to  our  present  economic  system,  which  has  counted 
our  workers  neither  as  souls  nor  as  heads,  but  as 
hands.  They  are  beginning  to  accept  the  suggestions 
of  that  method.  It  is  the  culmination  in  aggression 
of  that,  at  first,  entirely  protective  trade  unionism 
which  the  individual  selfishness  and  collective  short- 
sightedness and  State  blindness  of  our  owning  and 
directing  and  ruling  classes  forced  upon  the  working 
man.  At  first  trade  unionism  was  essentially  de- 
fensive; it  was  the  only  possible  defence  of  the  work- 
ers, who  were  being  steadily  pressed  over  the  margin 
of  subsistence.  It  was  a  nearly  involuntary  resist- 
ance to  class  debasement.  Mr.  Vernon  Hartshorn 
has  expressed  it  as  that  in  a  recent  article.  But  his 

103 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

paper,  if  one  read  it  from  beginning  to  end,  displayed, 
compactly  and  completely,  the  unavoidable  psycho- 
logical development  of  the  specialised  labour  case. 
He  began  in  the  mildest  tones  with  those  now  respect- 
able words,  a  "guaranteed  minimum"  of  wages, 
housing,  and  so  forth,  and  ended  with  a  very  clear 
intimation  of  an  all-labour  community. 

If  anything  is  certain  in  this  world,  it  is  that  the 
mass  of  the  community  will  not  rest  satisfied  with 
these  guaranteed  minima.  All  those  possible  legis- 
lative increments  in  the  general  standard  of  living  are 
not  going  to  diminish  the  labour  unrest;  they  are 
going  to  increase  it.  A  starving  man  may  think  he 
wants  nothing  in  the  world  but  bread,  but  when  he 
has  eaten  you  will  find  he  wants  all  sorts  of  things 
beyond.  Mr.  Hartshorn  assures  us  that  the  worker 
is  "not  out  for  a  theory."  So  much  the  worse  for  the 
worker,  and  all  of  us  when,  like  the  mere  hand  we 
have  made  him,  he  shows  himself  unable  to  define 
or  even  forecast  his  ultimate  intentions.  He  will  in 
that  case  merely  clutch.  And  the  obvious  immediate 
next  objective  of  that  clutch  directly  its  imagination 
passes  beyond  the  "guaranteed  minima"  phase  is  the 
industry  as  a  whole. 

I  do  not  see  how  anyone  who  desires  the  continuing 
development  of  civilisation  can  regard  a  trade  union 
as  anything  but  a  necessary  evil,  a  pressure-relieving 
contrivance,  an  arresting  and  delaying  organisation 
begotten  by  just  that  class  separation  of  labour 
which  in  the  commonweal  of  the  Great  State  will  be 

104 


SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP? 

altogether  destroyed.  It  leads  nowhither;  it  is  a 
shelter  hut  on  the  road.  The  wider  movement  of 
modern  civilisation  is  against  class  organisation  and 
caste  feeling.  These  are  forces  antagonistic  to  prog- 
ress, continually  springing  up  and  endeavouring  to 
stereotype  the  transitory  organisation,  and  con- 
tinually being  defeated. 

Of  all  the  solemn  imbecilities  one  hears,  surely  the 
most  foolish  is  this,  that  we  are  in  "an  age  of  special- 
isation." The  comparative  fruitfulness  and  hopeful- 
ness of  our  social  order,  in  comparison  with  any  other 
social  system,  lies  in  its  flat  contradiction  of  that 
absurdity.  Our  medical  and  surgical  advances,  for 
example,  are  almost  entirely  due  to  the  invasion  of 
medical  research  by  the  chemist;  our  naval  develop- 
ment to  the  supersession  of  the  sailor  by  the  engineer; 
we  sweep  away  the  coachman  with  the  railway,  beat 
the  suburban  line  with  the  electric  tramway,  and 
attack  that  again  with  the  petrol  omnibus,  oust  brick 
and  stonework  in  substantial  fabrics  by  steel  frames, 
replace  the  skilled  maker  of  woodcuts  by  a  photog- 
rapher, and  so  on  through  the  whole  range  of  our 
activities.  Change  of  function,  arrest  of  specialisa- 
tion by  innovations  in  method  and  appliance, 
progress  by  the  infringement  of  professional  boun- 
daries and  the  defiance  of  rule :  these  are  the  common- 
places of  our  time.  The  trained  man,  the  specialised 
man,  is  the  most  unfortunate  of  men;  the  world 
leaves  him  behind,  and  he  has  lost  his  power  of  over- 
taking it.  Versatility,  alert  adaptability,  these  are 

105 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

our  urgent  needs.  In  peace  and  war  alike  the  un- 
imaginative, uninventive  man  is  a  burthen  and  a 
retardation,  as  he  never  was  before  in  the  world's 
history.  The  modern  community,  therefore,  that 
succeeds  most  rapidly  and  most  completely  in  con- 
verting both  its  labourers  and  its  leisure  class  into  a 
population  of  active,  able,  unhurried,  educated,  and 
physically  well-developed  people  will  be  inevitably 
the  dominant  community  in  the  world.  That  lies 
on  the  face  of  things  about  us ;  a  man  who  cannot  see 
that  must  be  blind  to  the  traffic  in  our  streets. 

Syndicalism  is  not  a  plan  of  social  development. 
It  is  a  spirit  of  conflict.  That  conflict  lies  ahead  of 
us,  the  open  war  of  strikes,  or — if  the  forces  of  law 
and  order  crush  that  down — then  sabotage  and  that 
black  revolt  of  the  human  spirit  into  crime  which  we 
speak  of  nowadays  as  anarchism,  unless  we  can 
discover  a  broad  and  promising  way  from  the  present 
condition  of  things  to  nothing  less  than  the  complete 
abolition  of  the  labour  class. 

That,  I  know,  sounds  a  vast  proposal,  but  this  is 
a  gigantic  business  altogether,  and  we  can  do  nothing 
with  it  unless  we  are  prepared  to  deal  with  large 
ideas.  If  St.  Paul's  begins  to  totter  it  is  no  good 
propping  it  up  with  half  a  dozen  walking-sticks,  and 
small  palliatives  have  no  legitimate  place  at  all  in 
this  discussion.  Our  generation  has  to  take  up  this 
tremendous  necessity  of  a  social  reconstruction  in  a 
great  way;  its  broad  lines  have  to  be  thought  out  by 
thousands  of  minds,  and  it  is  for  that  reason  that 

1 06 


SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP? 

I  have  put  the  stress  upon  our  need  of  discussion,  of 
a  wide  intellectual  and  moral  stimulation,  of  a  stirring 
up  in  our  schools  and  pulpits,  and  upon  the  modern- 
isation and  clarification  of  what  should  be  the  de- 
liberative assembly  of  the  nation. 

It  would  be  presumptuous  to  anticipate  the 
National  Plan  that  must  emerge  from  so  vast  a 
debate,  but  certain  conclusions  I  feel  in  my  bones 
will  stand  the  test  of  an  exhaustive  criticism.  The 
first  is  that  a  distinction  will  be  drawn  between  what 
I  would  call  "interesting  work"  and  what  I  would 
call  "mere  labour."  The  two  things,  I  admit,  pass  by 
insensible  gradations  into  one  another,  but  while  on 
one  hand  such  work  as  being  a  master  gardener  and 
growing  roses,  or  a  master  cabinet  maker  and  making 
fine  pieces,  or  an  artist  of  almost  any  sort,  or  a  story 
writer,  or  a  consulting  physician,  or  a  scientific 
investigator,  or  a  keeper  of  wild  animals,  or  a  forester, 
or  a  librarian,  or  a  good  printer,  or  many  sorts  of 
engineer,  is  work  that  will  always  find  men  of  a 
certain  temperament  enthusiastically  glad  to  do  it, 
if  they  can  only  do  it  for  comfortable  pay — for  such 
work  is  in  itself  living — there  is,  on  the  other  hand, 
work  so  irksome  and  toilsome,  such  as  coal  mining, 
or  being  a  private  soldier  during  a  peace,  or  attending 
upon  lunatics,  or  stoking,  or  doing  over  and  over 
again,  almost  mechanically,  little  bits  of  a  modern 
industrial  process,  or  being  a  cash  desk  clerk  in  a 
busy  shop,  that  few  people  would  undertake  if  they 
could  avoid  it. 

107 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  the  whole  strength  of  our  collective  intelli- 
gence will  be  directed  first  to  reducing  the  amount  of 
such  irksome  work  by  labour-saving  machinery,  by 
ingenuity  of  management,  and  by  the  systematic 
avoidance  of  giving  trouble  as  a  duty,  and  then  to 
so  distributing  the  residuum  of  it  that  it  will  become 
the  whole  life  of  no  class  whatever  in  our  population. 
I  have  already  quoted  the  idea  of  Professor  William 
James  of  a  universal  conscription  for  such  irksome 
labour,  and  while  he  would  have  instituted  that 
mainly  for  its  immense  moral  effect  upon  the  com- 
munity, I  would  point  out  that,  combined  with  a 
nationalisation  of  transport,  mining,  and  so  forth, 
it  is  also  a  way  to  a  partial  solution  of  this  difficulty 
of  "mere  toil." 

And  the  mention  of  a  compulsory  period  of  labour 
service  for  everyone — a  year  or  so  with  the  pickaxe 
as  well  as  with  the  rifle — leads  me  to  another  idea 
that  I  believe  will  stand  the  test  of  unlimited  criti- 
cism, and  that  is  a  total  condemnation  of  all  these 
eight-hour-a-day,  early-closing,  guaranteed-weekly- 
half-holiday  notions  that  are  now  so  prevalent  in 
Liberal  circles.  Under  existing  conditions,  in  our 
system  of  private  enterprise  and  competition,  these 
restrictions  are  no  doubt  necessary  to  save  a  large 
portion  of  our  population  from  lives  of  continuous 
toil,  but,  like  trade  unionism,  they  are  a  necessity 
of  our  present  conditions,  and  not  a  way  to  a  better 
social  state.  If  we  rescue  ourselves  as  a  community 
from  poverty  and  discomfort,  we  must  take  care  not 

108 


SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP?, 

to  fling  ourselves  into  something  far  more  infuriating 
to  a  normal  human  being — and  that  is  boredom. 
The  prospect  of  a  carefully  inspected  sanitary  life, 
tethered  to  some  light,  little,  uninteresting  daily  job, 
six  or  eight  hours  of  it,  seems  to  me — and  I  am  sure  I 
write  here  for  most  normal,  healthy,  active  people — 
more  awful  than  hunger  and  death.  It  is  far  more 
in  the  quality  of  the  human  spirit,  and  still  more 
what  we  all  in  our  hearts  want  the  human  spirit  to 
be,  to  fling  itself  with  its  utmost  power  at  a  job  and 
do  it  with  passion. 

For  my  own  part,  if  I  was  sentenced  to  hew  a 
thousand  tons  of  coal,  I  should  want  to  get  at  it  at 
once  and  work  furiously  at  it,  with  the  shortest 
intervals  for  rest  and  refreshment  and  an  occasional 
night  holiday,  until  I  hewed  my  way  out,  and  if  some 
interfering  person  with  a  benevolent  air  wanted  to 
restrict  me  to  hewing  five  hundredweight,  and  no 
more  and  no  less,  each  day  and  every  day,  I  should 
be  strongly  disposed  to  go  for  that  benevolent  person 
with  my  pick.  That  is  surely  what  every  natural 
man  would  want  to  do,  and  it  is  only  the  clumsy 
imperfection  of  our  social  organisation  that  will  not 
enable  a  man  to  do  his  stint  of  labour  in  a  few  vigor- 
ous years  and  then  come  up  into  the  sunlight  for 
good  and  all. 

It  is  along  that  line  that  I  feel  a  large  part  of  our 
labour  reorganisation,  over  and  beyond  that  con- 
scription, must  ultimately  go.  The  community  as 
a  whole  would,  I  believe,  get  far  more  out  of  a  man 

109 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

if  he  had  such  a  comparatively  brief  passion  of  toil 
than  if  he  worked,  with  occasional  lapses  into  un- 
employment, drearily  all  his  life.  But  at  present, 
with  our  existing  system  of  employment,  one  cannot 
arrange  so  comprehensive  a  treatment  of  a  man's 
life.  There  is  needed  some  state  or  quasi-public 
organisation  which  shall  stand  between  the  man  and 
the  employer,  act  as  his  banker  and  guarantor,  and 
exact  his  proper  price.  Then,  with  his  toil  over,  he 
would  have  an  adequate  pension  and  be  free  to  do 
nothing  or  anything  else  as  he  chose.  In  a  Socialistic 
order  of  society,  where  the  State  would  also  be 
largely  the  employer,  such  a  method  would  be,  of 
course,  far  more  easily  contrived. 

The  more  modern  statements  of  Socialism  do  not 
contemplate  making  the  State  the  sole  employer;  it 
is  chiefly  in  transport,  mining,  fisheries,  forestry,  the 
cultivation  of  the  food  staples,  and  the  manufacture 
of  a  few  such  articles  as  bricks  and  steel,  and  possibly 
in  housing,  in  what  one  might  call  the  standardisable 
industries,  that  the  State  is  imagined  as  the  direct 
owner  and  employer,  and  it  is  just  in  these  depart- 
ments that  the  bulk  of  the  irksome  toil  is  to  be  found. 
There  remain  large  regions  of  mere  specialised  and 
individualised  production  that  many  Socialists  now- 
adays are  quite  prepared  to  leave  to  the  freer 
initiatives,  of  private  enterprise.  Most  of  these 
are  occupations  involving  a  greater  element  of 
interest,  less  direction  and  more  co-operation,  and 
it  is  just  here  that  the  success  of  co-partnery 

no 


SYNDICALISM  OR  CITIZENSHIP? 

and  a   sustained  life  participation  becomes  possi- 
ble. .  .  . 

This  complete  civilised  system  without  a  special- 
ised, property -less  labour  class  is  not  simply  a  possi- 
bility, it  is  necessary;  the  whole  social  movement  of 
the  time,  the  stars  in  their  courses,  war  against  the 
permanence  of  the  present  state  of  affairs.  The 
alternative  to  this  gigantic  effort  to  rearrange  our 
world  is  not  a  continuation  of  muddling  along,  but 
social  war.  The  Syndicalist  and  his  folly  will  be  the 
avenger  of  lost  opportunities.  Not  a  Labour  State 
do  we  want,  nor  a  Servile  State,  but  a  powerful 
Leisure  State  of  free  men. 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

§i 

FOR  many  years  now  I  have  taken  a  part  in  the 
discussion  of  Socialism.  During  that  time  Socialism 
has  become  a  more  and  more  ambiguous  term.  It  has 
seemed  to  me  desirable  to  clear  up  my  own  ideas  of 
social  progress  and  the  public  side  of  my  life  by 
restating  them,  and  this  I  have  attempted  in  this 
essay. 

In  order  to  do  so  it  has  been  convenient  to  coin 
two  expressions,  and  to  employ  them  with  a  certain 
defined  intention.  They  are  firstly:  The  Normal 
Social  Life,  and  secondly :  The  Great  State.  Through- 
out this  essay  these  expressions  will  be  used  in 
accordance  with  the  definitions  presently  to  be  given, 
and  the  fact  that  they  are  so  used  will  be  emphasised 
by  the  employment  of  capitals.  It  will  be  possible 
for  anyone  to  argue  that  what  is  here  defined  as  the 
Normal  Social  Life  is  not  the  normal  social  life,  and 
that  the  Great  State  is  indeed  no  state  at  all.  That 
will  be  an  argument  outside  the  range  delimited  by 
these  definitions. 

Now  what  is  intended  by  the  Normal  Social  Life 
here  is  a  type  of  human  association  and  employment, 

112 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

of  extreme  prevalence  and  antiquity,  which  appears 
to  have  been  the  lot  of  the  enormous  majority  of 
human  beings  as  far  back  as  history  or  tradition  or 
the  vestiges  of  material  that  supply  our  conceptions 
of  the  neolithic  period  can  carry  us.  It  has  never 
been  the  lot  of  all  humanity  at  any  time,  to-day  it  is 
perhaps  less  predominant  than  it  has  ever  been,  yet 
even  to-day  it  is  probably  the  lot  of  the  greater 
moiety  of  mankind. 

Essentially  this  type  of  association  presents  a 
localised  community,  a  community  of  which  the 
greater  proportion  of  the  individuals  are  engaged 
more  or  less  directly  in  the  cultivation  of  the  land. 
With  this  there  is  also  associated  the  grazing  or  herd- 
ing over  wider  or  more  restricted  areas,  belonging 
either  collectively  or  discreetly  to  the  community,  of 
sheep,  cattle,  goats,  or  swine,  and  almost  always 
the  domestic  fowl  is  commensal  with  man  in  this 
life.  The  cultivated  land  at  least  is  usually  assigned, 
temporarily  or  inalienably,  as  property  to  specific 
individuals,  and  the  individuals  are  grouped  in 
generally  monogamic  families  of  which  the  father  is 
the  head.  Essentially  the  social  unit  is  the  Family, 
and  even  where,  as  in  Mohammedan  countries,  there 
is  no  legal  or  customary  restriction  upon  polygamy, 
monogamy  still  prevails  as  the  ordinary  way  of  living. 
Unmarried  women  are  not  esteemed,  and  children 
are  desired.  According  to  the  dangers  or  securities  of 
the  region,  the  nature  of  the  cultivation  and  the 
temperament  of  the  people,  this  community  is  scat- 

"3 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

tered  either  widely  in  separate  steadings  or  drawn 
together  into  villages.  At  one  extreme,  over  large 
areas  of  thin  pasture  this  agricultural  community 
may  verge  on  the  nomadic;  at  another,  in  proximity 
to  consuming  markets,  it  may  present  the  concentra- 
tion of  intensive  culture.  There  may  be  an  adjacent 
Wild  supplying  wood,  and  perhaps  controlled  by  a 
simple  forestry.  The  law  that  holds  this  community 
together  is  largely  traditional  and  customary,  and 
almost  always  as  its  primordial  bond  there  is  some 
sort  of  temple  and  some  sort  of  priest.  Typically,  the 
temple  is  devoted  to  a  local  god  or  a  localised  saint, 
and  its  position  indicates  the  central  point  of  the 
locality,  its  assembly  place  and  its  market.  Associ- 
ated with  the  agriculture  there  are  usually  a  few 
imperfectly  specialised  tradesmen,  a  smith,  a  gar- 
ment-maker perhaps,  a  basket-maker  or  potter,  who 
group  about  the  church  or  temple.  The  community 
may  maintain  itself  in  a  state  of  complete  isolation, 
but  more  usually  there  are  tracks  or  roads  to  the 
centres  of  adjacent  communities,  and  a  certain  drift 
of  travel,  a  certain  trade  in  non-essential  things.  In 
the  fundamentals  of  life  this  normal  community  is 
independent  and  self -subsisting,  and  where  it  is  not 
beginning  to  be  modified  by  the  novel  forces  of  the 
new  times  it  produces  its  own  food  and  drink,  its  own 
clothing,  and  largely  intermarries  within  its  limits. 
This  in  general  terms  is  what  is  here  intended  by 
the  phrase  the  Normal  Social  Life.  It  is  still  the 
substantial  part  of  the  rural  life  of  all  Europe  and 

114 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

most  Asia  and  Africa,  and  it  has  been  the  life  of  the 
great  majority  of  human  beings  for  immemorial  years. 
It  is  the  root  life.  It  rests  upon  the  soil,  and  from 
that  soil  below  and  its  reaction  to  the  seasons  and  the 
moods  of  the  sky  overhead  have  grown  most  of  the 
traditions,  institutions,  sentiments,  beliefs,  super- 
stitions, and  fundamental  songs  and  stories  of 
mankind. 

But  since  the  very  dawn  of  history  at  least  this 
Normal  Social  Life  has  never  been  the  whole  com- 
plete life  of  mankind.  Quite  apart  from  the  marginal 
life  of  the  savage  hunter,  there  have  been  a  number 
of  forces  and  influences  within  men  and  women  and 
without,  that  have  produced  abnormal  and  surplus 
ways  of  living,  supplemental,  additional,  and  even 
antagonistic  to  this  normal  scheme. 

And  first  as  to  the  forces  within  men  and  women. 
Long  as  it  has  lasted,  almost  universal  as  it  has 
been,  the  human  being  has  never  yet  achieved  a 
perfect  adaptation  to  the  needs  of  the  Normal  Social 
Life.  He  has  attained  nothing  of  that  frictionless 
fitting  to  the  needs  of  association  one  finds  in  the 
bee  or  the  ant.  Curiosity,  deep  stirrings  to  wander, 
the  still  more  ancient  inheritance  of  the  hunter,  a 
recurrent  distaste  for  labour,  and  resentment  against 
the  necessary  subjugations  of  family  life  have  always 
been  a  straining  force  within  the  agricultural  com- 
munity. The  increase  of  population  during  periods 
of  prosperity  has  led  at  the  touch  of  bad  seasons  and 
adversity  to  the  desperate  reliefs  of  war  and  the 

"5 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

invasion  of  alien  localities.  And  the  nomadic  and 
adventurous  spirit  of  man  found  reliefs  and  oppor- 
tunities more  particularly  along  the  shores  of  great 
rivers  and  inland  seas.  Trade  and  travel  began,  at 
first  only  a  trade  in  adventitious  things,  in  metals 
and  rare  objects  and  luxuries  and  slaves.  With 
trade  came  writing  and  money;  the  inventions  of 
debt  and  rent,  usury  and  tribute.  History  finds 
already  in  its  beginnings  a  thin  network  of  trading 
and  slaving  flung  over  the  world  of  the  Normal  Social 
Life,  a  network  whose  strands  are  the  early  roads, 
whose  knots  are  the  first  towns  and  the  first  courts. 

Indeed,  all  recorded  history  is  in  a  sense  the  history 
of  these  surplus  and  supplemental  activities  of  man- 
kind. The  Normal  Social  Life  flowed  on  in  its  im- 
memorial fashion,  using  no  letters,  needing  no 
records,  leaving  no  history.  Then,  a  little  minority, 
bulking  disproportionately  in  the  record,  come  the 
trader,  the  sailor,  the  slave,  the  landlord  and  the 
tax-compeller,  the  townsman  and  the  king. 

All  written  history  is  the  story  of  a  minority  and 
their  peculiar  and  abnormal  affairs.  Save  in  so  far 
as  it  notes  great  natural  catastrophes  and  tells  of  the 
spreading  or  retrocession  of  human  life  through 
changes  of  climate  and  physical  conditions  it  resolves 
itself  into  an  account  of  a  series  of  attacks  and  modi- 
fications and  supplements  made  by  excessive  and 
superfluous  forces  engendered  within  the  community 
upon  the  Normal  Social  Life.  The  very  invention  of 
writing  is  a  part  of  those  modifying  developments. 

116 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

The  Normal  Social  Life  is  essentially  illiterate  and 
traditional.  The  Normal  Social  Life  is  as  mute  as 
the  standing  crops;  it  is  as  seasonal  and  cyclic  as 
nature  herself,  and  reaches  towards  the  future  only 
an  intimation  of  continual  repetitions. 

Now  this  human  over-life  may  take  either  benefi- 
cent or  maleficent  or  neutral  aspects  towards  the 
general  life  of  humanity.  It  may  present  itself  a 
law  and  pacification,  as  a  positive  addition  and 
superstructure  to  the  Normal  Social  Life,  as  roads 
and  markets  and  cities,  as  courts  and  unifying  mon- 
archies, as  helpful  and  directing  religious  organisa- 
tions, as  literature  and  art  and  science  and  phi- 
losophy, reflecting  back  upon  the  individual  in  the 
Normal  Social  Life  from  which  it  arose,  a  gilding  and 
refreshment  of  new  and  wider  interests  and  added 
pleasures  and  resources.  One  may  define  certain 
phases  in  the  history  of  various  countries  when  this 
was  the  state  of  affairs,  when  a  countryside  of  pros- 
perous communities  with  a  healthy  family  life  and 
a  wide  distribution  of  property,  animated  by  roads 
and  towns  and  unified  by  a  generally  intelligible 
religious  belief,  lived  in  a  transitory  but  satisfactory 
harmony  under  a  sympathetic  government.  I  take 
it  that  this  is  the  condition  to  which  the  minds  of 
such  original  and  vigorous  reactionary  thinkers  as 
Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Hilaire  Belloc  for 
example  turn,  as  being  the  most  desirable  state  of 
mankind. 

But  the  general  effect  of  history  is  to  present  these 
9  117 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

phases  as  phases  of  exceptional  good  luck,  and  to 
show  the  surplus  forces  of  humanity  as  on  the  whole 
antagonistic  to  any  such  equilibrium  with  the  Normal 
Social  Life.  To  open  the  book  of  history  haphazard 
is,  most  commonly,  to  open  it  at  a  page  where  the 
surplus  forces  appear  to  be  in  more  or  less  destructive 
conflict  with  the  Normal  Social  Life.  One  opens  at 
the  depopulation  of  Italy  by  the  aggressive  great 
estates  of  the  Roman  Empire,  at  the  impoverishment 
of  the  French  peasantry  by  a  too  centralised  mon- 
archy before  the  revolution,  or  at  the  huge  degenera- 
tive growth  of  the  great  industrial  towns  of  western 
Europe  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Or  again  one 
opens  at  destructive  wars.  One  sees  these  surplus 
forces  over  and  above  the  Normal  Social  Life  work- 
ing towards  unstable  concentrations  of  population, 
to  centralisation  of  government,  to  migrations  and 
conflicts  upon  a  large  scale;  one  discovers  the  process 
developing  into  a  phase  of  social  fragmentation  and 
destruction,  and  then,  unless  the  whole  country  has 
been  wasted  down  to  its  very  soil,  the  Normal  Social 
Life  returns  as  the  heath  and  furze  and  grass  return 
after  the  burning  of  a  common.  But  it  never  returns 
in  precisely  its  old  form.  The  surplus  forces  have 
always  produced  some  traceable  change ;  the  rhythm 
is  a  little  altered.  As  between  the  Gallic  peasant 
before  the  Roman  conquest,  the  peasant  of  the 
Gallic  province,  the  Carlovingian  peasant,  the  French 
peasant  of  the  thirteenth,  the  seventeenth,  and  the 
twentieth  centuries,  there  is,  in  spite  of  a  general 

118 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

uniformity  of  life,  of  a  common  atmosphere  of  cows, 
hens,  dung,  toil,  ploughing,  economy,  and  domestic 
intimacy,  an  effect  of  accumulating  generalising 
influences  and  of  wider  relevancies.  And  the  oscilla- 
tions of  empires  and  kingdoms,  religious  movements, 
wars,  invasions,  settlements  leave  upon  the  mind  an 
impression  that  the  surplus  life  of  mankind,  the  less- 
localised  life  of  mankind,  that  life  of  mankind  which 
is  not  directly  connected  with  the  soil  but  which  has 
become  more  or  less  detached  from  and  independent 
of  it,  is  becoming  proportionately  more  important 
in  relation  to  the  Normal  Social  Life.  It  is  as  if  a 
different  way  of  living  was  emerging  from  the  Nor- 
mal Social  Life  and  freeing  itself  from  its  traditions 
and  limitations. 

And  this  is  more  particularly  the  effect  upon  the 
mind  of  a  review  of  the  history  of  the  past  two  hun- 
dred years.  The  little  speculative  activities  of  the 
alchemist  and  natural  philosopher,  the  little  econom- 
ic experiments  of  the  acquisitive  and  enterprising 
landed  proprietor,  favoured  by  unprecedented  peri- 
ods of  security  and  freedom,  have  passed  into  a  new 
phase  of  extraordinary  productivity.  They  had 
added  preposterously  and  continue  to  add  on  a 
gigantic  scale  and  without  any  evident  limits  to  the 
continuation  of  their  additions,  to  the  resources  of 
humanity.  To  the  strength  of  horses  and  men  and 
slaves  has  been  added  the  power  of  machines  and  the 
possibility  of  economies  that  were  once  incredible. 
The  Normal  Social  Life  has  been  overshadowed  as 

119 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

it  has  never  been  overshadowed  before  by  the  con- 
centrations and  achievements  of  the  surplus  life. 
Vast  new  possibilities  open  to  the  race;  the  tradi- 
tional life  of  mankind,  its  traditional  systems  of 
association,  are  challenged  and  threatened;  and  all 
the  social  thought,  all  the  political  activity  of  our 
time  turns  in  reality  upon  the  conflict  of  this  ancient 
system  whose  essentials  we  have  here  defined  and 
termed  the  Normal  Social  Life  with  the  still  vague 
and  formless  impulses  that  seem  destined  either  to 
involve  it  and  the  race  in  a  final  destruction  or  to 
replace  it  by  some  new  and  probably  more  elaborate 
method  of  human  association. 

Because  there  is  the  following  difference  between 
the  action  of  the  surplus  forces  as  we  see  them  to-day 
and  as  they  appeared  before  the  outbreak  of  physical 
science  and  mechanism.  Then  it  seemed  clearly 
necessary  that  whatever  social  and  political  organisa- 
tion developed,  it  must  needs  rest  ultimately  on  the 
tiller  of  the  soil,  the  agricultural  holding,  and  the 
Normal  Social  Life.  But  now  even  in  agriculture 
huge  wholesale  methods  have  appeared.  They  are 
declared  to  be  destructive;  but  it  is  quite  conceivable 
that  they  may  be  made  ultimately  as  recuperative 
as  that  small  agriculture  which  has  hitherto  been  the 
inevitable  social  basis.  If  that  is  so,  then  the  new 
ways  of  living  may  not  simply  impose  themselves  in 
a  growing  proportion  upon  the  Normal  Social  Life, 
but  they  may  even  oust  it  and  replace  it  altogether. 
Or  they  may  oust  it  and  fail  to  replace  it.  In  the 

120 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

newer  countries  the  Normal  Social  Life  does  not 
appear  to  establish  itself  at  all  rapidly.  No  real 
peasantry  appears  in  either  America  or  Australia; 
and  in  the  older  countries,  unless  there  is  the  most 
elaborate  legislative  and  fiscal  protection,  the  peasant 
population  wanes  before  the  large  farm,  the  estate, 
and  overseas  production.  » 

Now  most  of  the  political  and  social  discussion  of 
the  last  hundred  years  may  be  regarded  and  re- 
phrased as  an  attempt  to  apprehend  this  defensive 
struggle  of  the  Normal  Social  Life  against  waxing 
novelty  and  innovation,  and  to  give  a  direction  and 
guidance  to  all  of  us  who  participate.  And  it  is  very 
largely  a  matter  of  temperament  and  free  choice 
still,  just  where  we  shall  decide  to  place  ourselves. 
Let  us  consider  some  of  the  key  words  of  contem- 
porary thought,  such  as  Liberalism,  Individualism, 
Socialism,  in  the  light  of  this  broad  generalisation  we 
have  made;  and  then  we  shall  find  it  easier  to  explain 
our  intention  in  employing  as  a  second  technicality 
the  phrase  of  The  Great  State  as  an  opposite  to  the 
Normal  Social  Life,  which  we  have  already  defined. 


The  Normal  Social  Life  has  been  defined  as  one 
based  on  agriculture,  traditional  and  essentially  un- 
changing. It  has  needed  no  toleration  and  displayed 
no  toleration  for  novelty  and  strangeness.  Its  beliefs 
have  been  of  such  a  nature  as  to  justify  and  sustain 

121 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

itself,  and  it  has  had  an  intrinsic  hostility  to  any 
other  beliefs.  The  God  of  its  community  has  been 
a  jealous  god  even  when  he  was  only  a  tribal  and  local 
god.  Only  very  occasionally  in  history  until  the 
coming  of  the  modern  period  do  we  find  any  human 
community  relaxing  from  this  ancient  and  more 
normal  state  of  entire  intolerance  towards  ideas  or 
practices  other  than  its  own.  When  toleration  and 
a  receptive  attitude  towards  alien  ideas  was  mani- 
fested in  the  Old  World,  it  was  at  some  trading 
centre  or  political  centre ;  new  ideas  and  new  religions 
came  by  water  along  the  trade  routes.  And  such 
toleration  as  there  was  rarely  extended  to  active 
teaching  and  propaganda.  Even  in  liberal  Athens 
the  hemlock  was  in  the  last  resort  at  the  service  of 
the  ancient  gods  and  the  ancient  morals  against  the 
sceptical  critic. 

But  with  the  steady  development  of  innovating 
forces  in  human  affairs  there  has  actually  grown  up  a 
cult  of  receptivity,  a  readiness  for  new  ideas,  a  faith 
in  the  probable  truth  of  novelties.  Liberalism — I  do 
not,  of  course,  refer  in  any  way  to  the  political  party 
which  makes  this  profession — is  essentially  anti- 
traditionalism;  its  tendency  is  to  commit  for  trial 
any  institution  or  belief  that  is  brought  before  it. 
It  is  the  accuser  and  antagonist  of  all  the  fixed  and 
ancient  values  and  imperatives  and  prohibitions  of 
the  Normal  Social  Life.  And  growing  up  in  relation 
to  Liberalism  and  sustained  by  it  is  the  great  body 
of  scientific  knowledge,  which  professes  at  least  to 

122 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

be  absolutely  undogmatic  and  perpetually  on  its 
trial  and  under  assay  and  re-examination. 

Now  a  very  large  part  of  the  advanced  thought  of 
the  past  century  is  no  more  than  the  confused  nega- 
tion of  the  broad  beliefs  and  institutions  which  have 
been  the  heritage  and  social  basis  of  humanity  for 
immemorial  years.  This  is  as  true  of  the  extremest 
Individualism  as  of  the  extremest  Socialism.  The 
former  denies  that  element  of  legal  and  customary 
control  which  has  always  subdued  the  individual  to 
the  needs  of  the  Normal  Social  Life,  and  the  latter 
that  qualified  independence  of  distributed  property 
which  is  the  basis  of  family  autonomy.  Both  are 
movements  against  the  ancient  life,  and  nothing  is 
more  absurd  than  the  misrepresentation  which  pre- 
sents either  as  a  conservative  force.  They  are  two 
divergent  schools  with  a  common  disposition  to 
reject  the  old  and  turn  towards  the  new.  The  Indi- 
vidualist professes  a  faith  for  which  he  has  no  rational 
evidence,  that  the  mere  abandonment  of  traditions 
and  controls  must  ultimately  produce  a  new  and 
beautiful  social  order;  while  the  Socialist,  with  an 
equal  liberalism,  regards  the  outlook  with  a  kind  of 
hopeful  dread,  and  insists  upon  an  elaborate  readjust- 
ment, a  new  and  untried  scheme  of  social  organisa- 
tion to  replace  the  shattered  and  weakening  Normal 
Social  Life. 

Both  these  movements,  and,  indeed,  all  movements 
that  are  not  movements  for  the  subjugation  of  inno- 
vation and  the  restoration  of  tradition,  are  vague  in 

123 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  prospect  they  contemplate.  They  produce  no 
definite  forecasts  of  the  quality  of  the  future  towards 
which  they  so  confidently  indicate  the  way.  But  this 
is  less  true  of  modern  socialism  than  of  its  antithesis, 
and  it  becomes  less  and  less  true  as  socialism,  under 
an  enormous  torrent  of  criticism,  slowly  washes  itself 
clean  from  the  mass  of  partial  statement,  hasty  mis- 
statement,  sheer  error  and  presumption  that  obscured 
its  first  emergence. 

But  it  is  well  to  be  very  clear  upon  one  point  at  this 
stage,  and  that  is,  that  this  present  time  is  not  a 
battle-ground  between  individualism  and  socialism; 
it  is  a  battle-ground  between  the  Normal  Social  Life 
on  the  one  hand  and  a  complex  of  forces  on  the  other 
which  seek  a  form  of  replacement  and  seem  partially 
to  find  it  in  these  and  other  doctrines. 

Nearly  all  contemporary  thinkers  who  are  not  too 
muddled  to  be  assignable  fall  into  one  of  three 
classes,  of  which  the  third  we  shall  distinguish  is  the 
largest  and  most  various  and  divergent.  It  will  be 
convenient  to  say  a  little  of  each  of  these  classes 
before  proceeding  to  a  more  particular  account  of  the 
third.  Our  analysis  will  cut  across  many  accepted 
classifications,  but  there  will  be  ample  justification 
for  this  rearrangement.  All  of  them  may  be  dealt 
with  quite  justly  as  accepting  the  general  ac- 
count of  the  historical  process  which  is  here 
given. 

Then  first  we  must  distinguish  a  series  of  writers 
and  thinkers  which  one  may  call — the  word  conserva- 

124 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

tive  being  already  politically  assigned — the  Con- 
servators. 

These  are  people  who  really  do  consider  the  Nor- 
mal Social  Life  as  the  only  proper  and  desirable  life 
for  the  great  mass  of  humanity,  and  they  are  fully 
prepared  to  subordinate  all  exceptional  and  surplus 
lives  to  the  moral  standards  and  limitations  that 
arise  naturally  out  of  the  Normal  Social  Life.  They 
desire  a  state  in  which  property  is  widely  distributed, 
a  community  of  independent  families  protected  by 
law  and  an  intelligent  democratic  statecraft  from  the 
economic  aggressions  of  large  accumulations  and 
linked  by  a  common  religion.  Their  attitude  to  the 
forces  of  change  is  necessarily  a  hostile  attitude. 
They  are  disposed  to  regard  innovations  in  transit 
and  machinery  as  undesirable,  and  even  mischievous 
disturbances  of  a  wholesome  equilibrium.  They  are 
at  least  unfriendly  to  any  organisation  of  scientific 
research,  and  scornful  of  the  pretensions  of  science. 
Criticisms  of  the  methods  of  logic,  scepticism  of  the 
more  widely  diffused  human  beliefs,  they  would 
classify  as  insanity.  Two  able  English  writers, 
Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Belloc,  have  given  the 
clearest  expression  to  this  system  of  ideals,  and 
stated  an  admirable  case  for  it.  They  present  a  con- 
ception of  vinous,  loudly  singing,  earthy,  toiling, 
custom-ruled,  wholesome,  and  insanitary  men;  they 
are  pagan  in  the  sense  that  their  hearts  are  with  the 
villagers  and  not  with  the  townsmen,  Christian  in  the 
spirit  of  the  parish  priest.  There  are  no  other  Con- 

125 


servators  so  clear-headed  and  consistent.  But  their 
teaching  is  merely  the  logical  expression  of  an  enor- 
mous amount  of  conservative  feeling.  Vast  multi- 
tudes of  less  lucid  minds  share  their  hostility  to 
novelty  and  research;  hate,  dread,  and  are  eager  to 
despise  science,  and  glow  responsive  to  the  warm, 
familiar  expressions  of  primordial  feelings  and  im- 
memorial prejudices.  The  rural  conservative,  the 
liberal  of  the  allotments  and  small-holdings  type, 
Mr.  Roosevelt — in  his  Wester-farmer,  philoprogeni- 
tive phase  as  distinguished  from  the  phase  of  his 
more  imperialist  moments — all  present  themselves 
as  essentially  Conservators,  as  seekers  after  and  pre- 
servers of  the  Normal  Social  Life. 

So,  too,  do  Socialists  of  the  William  Morris  type. 
The  mind  of  William  Morris  was  profoundly  re- 
actionary. He  hated  the  whole  trend  of  later 
nineteenth-century  modernism  with  the  hatred  nat- 
ural to  a  man  of  considerable  scholarship  and  intense 
aesthetic  sensibilities.  His  mind  turned,  exactly  as 
Mr.  Belloc's  turns,  to  the  finished  and  enriched 
Normal  Social  Life  of  western  Europe  in  the  middle 
ages,  but,  unlike  Mr.  Belloc,  he  believed  that,  given 
private  ownership  of  land  and  the  ordinary  materials 
of  life,  there  must  necessarily  be  an  aggregatory  proc- 
ess, usury,  expropriation,  the  development  of  an 
exploiting  wealthy  class.  He  believed  profit  was 
the  devil.  His  News  from  Nowhere  pictures  a  com- 
munism that  amounted  in  fact  to  little  more  than  a 
system  of  private  ownership  of  farms  and  trades 

126 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

without  money  or  any  buying  and  selling,  in  an 
atmosphere  of  geniality,  generosity,  and  mutual  help- 
fulness. Mr.  Belloc,  with  a  harder  grip  upon  the 
realities  of  life,  would  have  the  widest  distribution  of 
proprietorship,  with  an  alert  democratic  government 
continually  legislating  against  the  protean  reappear- 
ances of  usury  and  accumulation,  and  attacking, 
breaking  up,  and  redistributing  any  large  unantici- 
pated bodies  of  wealth  that  appeared.  But  both  men 
are  equally  set  towards  the  Normal  Social  Life,  and 
equally  enemies  of  the  New.  The  so-called  "so- 
cialist" land  legislation  of  New  Zealand  again  is  a 
tentative  towards  the  realisation  of  the  same  school  of 
ideas:  great  estates  are  to  be  automatically  broken 
up,  property  is  to  be  kept  disseminated;  a  vast 
amount  of  political  speaking  and  writing  in  America 
and  throughout  the  world  enforces  one's  impres- 
sion of  the  widespread  influence  of  Conservator 
ideals. 

Of  course,  it  is  inevitable  that  phases  of  prosperity 
for  the  Normal  Social  Life  will  lead  to  phases  of 
overpopulation  and  scarcity,  there  will  be  occasional 
famines  and  occasional  pestilences  and  plethoras  of 
vitality  leading  to  the  blood-letting  of  war.  I  sup- 
pose Mr.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Belloc  at  least  have  the 
courage  of  their  opinions,  and  are  prepared  to  say 
that  such  things  always  have  been  and  always  must 
be ;  they  are  part  of  the  jolly  rhythms  of  the  human 
lot  under  the  sun,  and  are  to  be  taken  with  the 
harvest  home  and  love-making  and  the  peaceful 

127 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ending  of  honoured  lives  as  an  integral  part  of  the 
unending  drama  of  mankind. 


§3 

Now  opposed  to  the  Conservators  are  all  those  who 
do  not  regard  contemporary  humanity  as  a  final  thing 
nor  the  Normal  Social  Life  as  the  inevitable  basis 
of  human  continuity.  They  believe  in  secular 
change,  in  Progress,  in  a  future  for  our  species 
differing  continually  more  from  its  past.  On  the 
whole,  they  are  prepared  for  the  gradual  disentangle- 
ment of  men  from  the  Normal  Social  Life  altogether, 
and  they  look  for  new  ways  of  living  and  new  methods 
of  human  association  with  a  certain  adventurous 
hopefulness. 

Now,  this  second  large  class  does  not  so  much 
admit  of  subdivision  into  two  as  present  a  great 
variety  of  intermediaries  between  two  extremes.  I 
propose  to  give  distinctive  names  to  these  extremes, 
with  the  very  clear  proviso  that  they  are  not  antago- 
nised, and  that  the  great  multitude  of  this  second, 
anti-conservator  class,  this  liberal,  more  novel  class 
modern  conditions  have  produced,  falls  between 
them,  and  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other,  but 
partaking  in  various  degrees  of  both.  On  the  one 
hand,  then,  we  have  that  type  of  mind  which  is 
irritated  by  and  distrustful  of  all  collective  pro- 
ceedings, which  is  profoundly  distrustful  of  churches 
and  states,  which  is  expressed  essentially  by  Indi- 

128 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

vidualism.  The  Individualist  appears  to  regard  the 
extensive  disintegrations  of  the  Normal  Social  Life 
that  are  going  on  to-day  with  an  extreme  hopefulness. 
Whatever  is  ugly  or  harsh  in  modern  industrialism 
or  in  the  novel  social  development  of  our  time  he 
seems  to  consider  as  a  necessary  aspect  of  a  process 
of  selection  and  survival,  whose  tendencies  are  on 
the  whole  inevitably  satisfactory.  The  future  wel- 
fare of  man  he  believes  in  effect  may  be  trusted  to  the 
spontaneous  and  planless  activities  of  people  of  good 
will,  and  nothing  but  state  intervention  can  effec- 
tively impede  its  attainment.  And  curiously  close 
to  this  extreme  optimistic  school  in  its  moral  quality 
and  logical  consequences,  though  contrasting  widely 
in  the  sinister  gloom  of  its  spirit,  is  the  socialism  of 
Karl  Marx.  He  declared  the  contemporary  world 
to  be  a  great  process  of  financial  aggrandisement  and 
general  expropriation,  of  increasing  power  for  the 
few  and  of  increasing  hardship  and  misery  for  the 
many,  a  process  that  would  go  on  until  at  last  a 
crisis  of  unendurable  tension  would  be  reached  and 
the  social  revolution  ensue.  The  world  had,  in  fact, 
to  be  worse  before  it  could  hope  to  be  better.  He 
contemplated  a  continually  exacerbated  Class  War, 
with  a  millennium  of  extraordinary  vagueness  beyond 
as  the  reward  of  the  victorious  workers.  His  common 
quality  with  the  Individualist  lies  in  his  repudiation 
of  and  antagonism  to  plans  and  arrangements,  in  his 
belief  in  the  overriding  power  of  Law.  Their  com- 
mon influence  is  the  discouragement  of  collective 

129 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

understandings  upon  the  basis  of  the  existing  state. 
Both  converge  in  practice  upon  laissezfaire.  I  would 
therefore  lump  them  together  under  the  term  of 
Planless  Progressives,  and  I  would  contrast  with 
them  those  types  which  believe  supremely  in  sys- 
tematised  purpose. 

The  purposeful  and  systematic  types,  in  common 
with  the  Individualist  and  Marxist,  regard  the 
Normal  Social  Life,  for  all  the  many  thousands  of 
years  behind  it,  as  a  phase,  and  as  a  phase  which  is 
now  passing,  in  human  experience;  and  they  are 
prepared  for  a  future  society  that  may  be  ultimately 
different  right  down  to  its  essential  relationships  from 
the  human  past.  But  they  also  believe  that  the 
forces  that  have  been  assailing  and  disintegrating  the 
Normal  Social  Life,  which  have  been,  on  the  one 
hand,  producing  great  accumulations  of  wealth, 
private  freedom,  and  ill-defined,  irresponsible  and 
socially  dangerous  power,  and,  on  the  other,  labour 
hordes,  for  the  most  part  urban,  without  any  prop- 
erty or  outlook  except  continuous  toil  and  anxiety, 
which  in  England  have  substituted  a  dischargeable 
agricultural  labourer  for  the  independent  peasant 
almost  completely,  and  in  America  seem  to  be 
arresting  any  general  development  of  the  Normal 
Social  Life  at  all,  are  forces  of  wide  and  indefinite 
possibility  that  need  to  be  controlled  by  a  collective 
effort  implying  a  collective  design,  deflected  from 
merely  injurious  consequences  and  organised  for  a 
new  human  welfare  upon  new  lines.  They  agree  with 

130 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

that  class  of  thinking  I  have  distinguished  as  the 
Conservators  in  their  recognition  of  vast  contempo- 
rary disorders  and  their  denial  of  the  essential  benefi- 
cence of  change.  But  while  the  former  seem  to 
regard  all  novelty  and  innovation  as  a  mere  inunda- 
tion to  be  met,  banked  back,  defeated  and  survived, 
these  more  hopeful  and  adventurous  minds  would 
rather  regard  contemporary  change  as  amounting  on 
the  whole  to  the  tumultuous  and  almost  catastrophic 
opening-up  of  possible  new  channels,  the  violent 
opportunity  of  vast,  deep,  new  ways  to  great  unprec- 
edented human  ends,  ends  that  are  neither  feared 
nor  evaded. 

Now  while  the  Conservators  are  continually  talk- 
ing of  the  "eternal  facts"  of  human  life  and  human 
nature  and  falling  back  upon  a  conception  of  perma- 
nence that  is  continually  less  true  as  our  perspectives 
extend,  these  others  are  full  of  the  conception  of 
adaptation,  of  deliberate  change  in  relationship  and 
institution  to  meet  changing  needs.  I  would  suggest 
for  them,  therefore,  as  opposed  to  the  Conservators 
and  contrasted  with  the  Planless  Progressives,  the 
name  of  Constructors.  They  are  the  extreme  right, 
as  it  were,  while  the  Planless  Progressives  are  the 
extreme  left  of  Anti-Conservator  thought. 

I  believe  that  these  distinctions  I  have  made  cover 
practically  every  clear  form  of  contemporary  think- 
ing, and  are  a  better  and  more  helpful  classification 
than  any  now  current.  But,  of  course,  nearly  every 
individual  nowadays  is  at  least  a  little  confused,  and 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

will  be  found  to  wobble  in  the  course  even  of  a  brief 
discussion  between  one  attitude  and  the  other. 
This  is  a  separation  of  opinions  rather  than  of  per- 
sons. And  particularly  that  word  Socialism  has 
become  so  vague  and  incoherent  that  for  a  man  to 
call  himself  a  socialist  nowadays  is  to  give  no  indica- 
tion whatever  whether  he  is  a  Conservator  like"Will- 
iam  Morris,  a  non-Constructor  like  Karl  Marx,  or 
a  Constructor  of  any  of  half  a  dozen  different  schools. 
On  the  whole,  however,  modern  socialism  tends  to 
fall  towards  the  Constructor  wing.  So,  too,  do  those 
various  movements  in  England  and  Germany  and 
France  called  variously  nationalist  and  imperialist, 
and  so  do  the  American  civic  and  social  reformers. 
Under  the  same  heading  must  come  such  attempts  to 
give  the  vague  impulses  of  Syndicalism  a  concrete 
definition  as  the  "Guild  Socialism"  of  M.  Orage. 
All  these  movements  are  agreed  that  the  world  is 
progressive  towards  a  novel  and  unprecedented  social 
order,  not  necessarily  and  fatally  better,  and  that  it 
needs  organised  and  even  institutional  guidance 
thither,  however  much  they  differ  as  to  the  form  that 
order  should  assume. 

For  the  greater  portion  of  a  century  socialism  has 
been  before  the  world,  and  it  is  not  perhaps  prema- 
ture to  attempt  a  word  or  so  of  analysis  of  that  great 
movement  in  the  new  terms  we  are  here  employing. 
The  origins  of  the  socialist  idea  were  complex  and 
multifarious,  never  at  any  time  has  it  succeeded  in 
separating  out  a  statement  of  itself  that  was  at  once 

132 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

simple,  complete,  and  acceptable  to  any  large  pro- 
portion of  those  who  call  themselves  socialists.  But 
always  it  has  pointed  to  two  or  three  definite  things. 
The  first  of  these  is  that  unlimited  freedoms  of  pri- 
vate property,  with  increasing  facilities  of  exchange, 
combination,  and  aggrandisement,  become  more  and 
more  dangerous  to  human  liberty  by  the  expropria- 
tion and  reduction  to  private  wages  slavery  of  larger 
and  larger  proportions  of  the  population.  Every 
school  of  socialism  states  this  in  some  more  or  less 
complete  form,  however  divergent  the  remedial 
methods  suggested  by  the  different  schools.  And, 
next,  every  school  of  socialism  accepts  the  concen- 
tration of  management  and  property  as  necessary, 
and  declines  to  contemplate  what  is  the  typical  Con- 
servator remedy,  its  refragmentation.  Accordingly 
it  sets  up  not  only  against  the  large  private  owner, 
but  against  owners  generally,  the  idea  of  a  public 
proprietor,  the  State,  which  shall  hold  in  the  col- 
lective interest.  But  where  the  earlier  socialisms 
stopped  short,  and  where  to  this  day  socialism  is 
vague,  divided,  and  unprepared,  is  upon  the  psycho- 
logical problems  involved  in  that  new  and  largely 
unprecedented  form  of  proprietorship,  and  upon  the 
still  more  subtle  problems  of  its  attainment.  These 
are  vast,  and  profoundly,  widely,  and  multitudi- 
nously  difficult  problems,  and  it  was  natural  and 
inevitable  that  the  earlier  socialists  in  the  first  en- 
thusiasm of  their  idea  should  minimise  these  diffi- 
culties, pretend  in  the  fullness  of  their  faith  that 
10  133 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

partial  answers  to  objections  were  complete  answers, 
and  display  the  common  weaknesses  of  honest  prop- 
aganda the  whole  world  over.  Socialism  is  now 
old  enough  to  know  better.  Few  modern  socialists 
present  their  faith  as  a  complete  panacea,  and  most 
are  now  setting  to  work  in  earnest  upon  these  long- 
shirked  preliminary  problems  of  human  interaction 
through  which  the  vital  problem  of  a  collective  head 
and  brain  can  alone  be  approached. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  socialist  move- 
ment remains,  as  it  has  been  from  the  first,  vaguely 
democratic.  It  points  to  collective  ownership  with 
no  indication  of  the  administrative  scheme  it  con- 
templates to  realise  that  intention.  Necessarily  it 
remains  a  formless  claim  without  hands  to  take  hold 
of  the  thing  it  desires.  Indeed,  in  a  large  number 
of  cases  it  is  scarcely  more  than  a  resentful  conscious- 
ness in  the  expropriated  masses  of  a  social  disinte- 
gration. It  spends  its  force  very  largely  in  mere 
revenges  upon  property  as  such,  attacks  simply 
destructive  by  reason  of  the  absence  of  any  definite 
ulterior  scheme.  It  is  an  ill-equipped  and  planless 
belligerent  who  must  destroy  whatever  he  captures 
because  he  can  neither  use  nor  take  away.  A  council 
of  democratic  socialists  in  possession  of  London 
would  be  as  capable  of  an  orderly  and  sustained 
administration  as  the  Anabaptists  in  Munster.  But 
the  discomforts  and  disorders  of  our  present  planless 
system  do  tend  steadily  to  the  development  of  this 
crude  socialistic  spirit  in  the  mass  of  the  proletariat ; 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

merely  vindictive  attacks  upon  property,  sabotage, 
and  the  general  strike  are  the  logical  and  inevitable 
consequences  of  an  uncontrolled  concentration  of 
property  in  a  few  hands,  and  such  things  must  and 
will  go  on,  the  deep  undertow  in  the  deliquescence  of 
the  Normal  Social  Life,  until  a  new  justice,  a  new 
scheme  of  compensations  and  satisfactions  is  at- 
tained, or  the  Normal  Social  Life  re-emerges. 

Fabian  socialism  was  the  first  systematic  attempt 
to  meet  the  fatal  absence  of  administrative  schemes 
in  the  earlier  socialisms.  It  can  scarcely  be  regarded 
now  as  anything  but  an  interesting  failure,  but  a 
failure  that  has  all  the  educational  value  of  a  first 
reconnaissance  into  unexplored  territory.  Starting 
from  that  attack  on  aggregating  property,  which  is 
the  common  starting-point  of  all  socialist  projects, 
the  Fabians,  appalled  at  the  obvious  difficulties  of 
honest  confiscation  and  an  open  transfer  from  private 
to  public  hands,  conceived  the  extraordinary  idea  of 
filching  property  for  the  state.  A  small  body  of 
people  of  extreme  astuteness  were  to  bring  about 
the  municipalisation  and  nationalisation  first  of  this 
great  system  of  property  and  then  of  that,  in  a 
manner  so  artful  that  the  millionaires  were  to  wake 
up  one  morning  at  last,  and  behold,  they  would  find 
themselves  poor  men!  For  a  decade  or  more  Mr. 
Pease,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney 
Webb,  Mrs.  Besant,  Dr.  Lawson  Dodd,  and  their 
associates  of  the  London  Fabian  Society  did  pit  their 
wits  and  ability,  or  at  any  rate  the  wits  and  ability 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  their  leisure  moments,  against  the  embattled 
capitalists  of  England  and  the  world,  in  this  com- 
plicated and  delicate  enterprise,  without  any  appar- 
ent diminution  of  the  larger  accumulations  of  wealth. 
But  in  addition  they  developed  another  side  of  Fa- 
bianism, still  more  subtle,  which  professed  to  be  a 
kind  of  restoration  in  kind  of  property  to  the  pro- 
letariat, and  in  this  direction  they  were  more  suc- 
cessful. A  dexterous  use,  they  decided,  was  to  be 
made  of  the  Poor  Law,  the  public  health  authority, 
the  education  authority,  and  building  regulations  and 
so  forth,  to  create,  so  to  speak,  a  communism  of  the 
lower  levels.  The  mass  of  people  whom  the  forces 
of  change  had  expropriated  were  to  be  given  a  certain 
minimum  of  food,  shelter,  education,  and  sanitation, 
and  this,  the  socialists  were  assured,  could  be  used 
as  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge  towards  a  complete 
communism.  The  minimum,  once  established,  could 
obviously  be  raised  continually  until  either  every- 
body had  what  they  needed  or  the  resources  of 
society  gave  out  and  set  a  limit  to  the  process. 

This  second  method  of  attack  brought  the  Fabian 
movement  into  co-operation  with  a  large  amount  of 
benevolent  and  constructive  influence  outside  the 
socialist  ranks  altogether.  Few  wealthy  people  really 
grudge  the  poor  a  share  of  the  necessities  of  life,  and 
most  are  quite  willing  to  assist  in  projects  for  such 
a  distribution.  But  while  these  schemes  naturally 
involved  a  very  great  amount  of  regulation  and 
regimentation  of  the  affairs  of  the  poor,  the  Fabian 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

Society  fell  away  more  and  more  from  its  associated 
proposals  for  the  socialisation  of  the  rich.  The 
Fabian  project  changed  steadily  in  character  until 
at  last  it  ceased  to  be  in  any  sense  antagonistic  to 
wealth  as  such.  If  the  lion  did  not  exactly  lie  down 
with  the  lamb,  at  any  rate  the  man  with  the  gun  and 
the  alleged  social  mad  dog  returned  very  peaceably 
together.  The  Fabian  hunt  was  up. 

Great  financiers  contributed  generously  to  a 
School  of  Economics  that  had  been  founded  with 
moneys  left  to  the  Fabian  Society  by  earlier  en- 
thusiasts for  socialist  propaganda  and  education.  It 
remained  for  Mr.  Belloc  to  point  the  moral  of  the 
whole  development  with  a  phrase,  to  note  that 
Fabianism  no  longer  aimed  at  the  socialisation  of  the 
whole  community,  but  only  at  the  socialisation  of  the 
poor.  The  first  really  complete  project  for  a  new 
social  order  to  replace  the  Normal  Social  Life  was 
before  the  world,  and  this  project  was  the  compulsory 
regimentation  of  the  workers  and  the  complete  state 
control  of  labour  under  a  new  plutocracy.  Our 
present  chaos  was  to  be  organised  into  a  Servile 
State. 

§4 

Now  to  many  of  us  who  found  the  general  spirit 
of  the  socialist  movement  at  least  hopeful  and  at- 
tractive and  sympathetic,  this  would  be  an  almost 
tragic  conclusion,  did  we  believe  that  Fabianism 
was  anything  more  than  the  first  experiment  in 
planning — and  one  almost  inevitably  shallow  and 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

presumptuous — of  the  long  series  that  may  be  neces- 
sary before  a  clear  light  breaks  upon  the  road  hu- 
manity must  follow.  But  we  decline  to  be  forced 
by  this  one  intellectual  fiasco  towards  the  laissezfaire 
of  the  Individualist  and  the  Marxist,  or  to  accept 
the  Normal  Social  Life  with  its  atmosphere  of  hens 
and  cows  and  dung,  its  incessant  toil,  its  servitude 
of  women,  and  its  endless  repetitions  as  the  only 
tolerable  life  conceivable  for  the  bulk  of  mankind — 
as  the  ultimate  life,  that  is,  of  mankind.  With  less 
arrogance  and  confidence,  but  it  may  be  with  a 
firmer  faith,  we  declare  that  we  believe  a  more 
spacious  social  order  than  any  that  exists  or  ever  has 
existed,  a  Peace  of  the  World  in  which  there  is  an 
almost  universal  freedom,  health,  happiness,  and 
well-being,  and  which  contains  the  seeds  of  a  still 
greater  future,  is  possible  to  mankind.  We  propose 
to  begin  again  with  the  recognition  of  those  same 
difficulties  the  Fabians  first  realised.  But  we  do  not 
propose  to  organise  a  society,  form  a  group  for  the 
control  of  the  two  chief  political  parties,  bring  about 
"socialism"  in  twenty-five  years,  or  do  anything 
beyond  contributing  in  our  place  and  measure  to  that 
constructive  discussion  whose  real  magnitude  we  now 
begin  to  realise. 

We  have  faith  in  a  possible  future,  but  it  is  a  faith 
that  makes  the  quality  of  that  future  entirely  de- 
pendent upon  the  strength  and  clearness  of  purpose 
that  this  present  time  can  produce.  We  do  not 
believe  the  greater  social  state  is  inevitable. 

138 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

Yet  there  is,  we  hold,  a  certain  qualified  inevita- 
bility about  this  greater  social  state  because  we 
believe  any  social  state  not  affording  a  general  con- 
tentment, a  general  freedom,  and  a  general  and  in- 
creasing fullness  of  life,  must  sooner  or  later  collapse 
and  disintegrate  again,  and  revert  more  or  less  com- 
pletely to  the  Normal  Social  Life,  and  because  we 
believe  the  Normal  Social  Life  is  itself  thick-sown 
with  the  seeds  of  fresh  beginnings.  The  Normal 
Social  Life  has  never  at  any  time  been  absolutely 
permanent,  always  it  has  carried  within  itself  the 
germs  of  enterprise  and  adventure  and  exchanges 
that  finally  attack  its  stability.  The  superimposed 
social  order  of  to-day,  such  as  it  is,  with  its  huge 
development  of  expropriated  labour,  and  the  schemes 
of  the  later  Fabians  to  fix  this  state  of  affairs  in  an 
organised  form  and  render  it  plausibly  tolerable, 
seem  also  doomed  to  accumulate  catastrophic  ten- 
sions. Bureaucratic  schemes  for  establishing  the 
regular  life-long  subordination  of  a  labouring  class, 
enlivened  though  they  may  be  by  frequent  inspection, 
disciplinary  treatment  during  seasons  of  unemploy- 
ment, compulsory  temperance,  free  medical  attend- 
ance, and  a  cheap  and  shallow  elementary  education, 
fail  to  satisfy  the  restless  cravings  in  the  heart  of 
man.  They  are  cravings  that  even  the  baffling 
methods  of  the  most  ingeniously  worked  Conciliation 
Boards  cannot  permanently  restrain.  The  drift  of 
any  Servile  State  must  be  towards  a  class  revolt, 
paralysing  sabotage,  and  a  general  strike.  The  more 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

rigid  and  complete  the  Servile  State  becomes,  the 
more  thorough  will  be  its  ultimate  failure.  Its  fate 
is  decay  or  explosion.  From  its  debris  we  shall  either 
revert  to  the  Normal  Social  Life  and  begin  again  the 
long  struggle  towards  that  ampler,  happier,  juster 
arrangement  of  human  affairs  which  we  of  this  book, 
at  any  rate,  believe  to  be  possible,  or  we  shall  pass 
into  the  twilight  of  mankind. 

This  greater  social  life  we  put,  then,  as  the  only 
real  alternative  to  the  Normal  Social  Life  from  which 
man  is  continually  escaping.  For  it  we  do  not 
propose  to  use  the  expressions  the  "socialist  state" 
or  "socialism"  because  we  believe  those  terms  have 
now  by  constant  confused  use  become  so  battered 
and  bent  and  discoloured  by  irrelevant  associations 
as  to  be  rather  misleading  than  expressive.  We  pro- 
pose to  use  the  term  The  Great  State  to  express  this 
ideal  of  a  social  system  no  longer  localised,  no  longer 
immediately  tied  to  and  conditioned  by  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  land,  worldwide  in  its  interests  and  out- 
look and  catholic  in  its  tolerance  and  sympathy,  a 
system  of  great  individual  freedom  with  a  universal 
understanding  among  its  citizens  of  a  collective 
thought  and  purpose. 

Now,  the  difficulties  that  lie  in  the  way  of  hu- 
manity in  its  complex  and  toilsome  journey  through 
the  coming  centuries  towards  this  Great  State  are 
fundamentally  difficulties  of  adaptation  and  adjust- 
ment. To  no  conceivable  social  state  is  man  in- 
herently fitted:  he  is  a  creature  of  jealousy  and 

140 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

suspicion,  unstable,  restless,  acquisitive,  aggressive, 
intractable,  and  of  a  most  subtle  and  nimble  dis- 
honesty. Moreover,  he  is  imaginative,  adventurous, 
and  inventive.  His  nature  and  instincts  are  as  much 
in  conflict  with  the  necessary  restrictions  and  subju- 
gation of  the  Normal  Social  Life  as  they  are  likely  to 
be  with  any  other  social  net  that  necessity  may  weave 
about  him.  But  the  Normal  Social  Life  has  this 
advantage,  that  it  has  a  vast  accumulated  moral 
tradition  and  a  minutely  worked-out  material 
method.  All  the  fundamental  institutions  have 
arisen  in  relation  to  it  and  are  adapted  to  its  con- 
ditions. To  revert  to  it  after  any  phase  of  social 
chaos  and  distress  is  and  will  continue  for  many 
years  to  be  the  path  of  least  resistance  for  perplexed 
humanity. 

This  conception  of  the  Great  State,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  still  altogether  unsubstantial.  It  is  a  proj- 
ect as  dreamlike  to-day  as  electric  lighting,  electric 
traction,  or  aviation  would  have  been  in  the  year 
1850.  In  1850  a  man  reasonably  conversant  with 
the  physical  science  of  his  time  would  have  declared 
with  a  very  considerable  confidence  that,  given  a 
certain  measure  of  persistence  and  social  security, 
these  things  were  more  likely  to  be  attained  than  not 
in  the  course  of  the  next  century.  But  such  a 
prophecy  was  conditional  on  the  preliminary  accu- 
mulation of  a  considerable  amount  of  knowledge,  on 
many  experiments  and  failures.  Had  the  world  of 
1850,  by  some  wave  of  impulse,  placed  all  its  re- 

141 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

sources  in  the  hands  of  the  ablest  scientific  man 
alive,  and  asked  him  to  produce  a  practicable  paying 
electric  vehicle  before  1852,  at  best  he  would  have 
produced  some  clumsy,  curious  toy,  more  probably 
he  would  have  failed  altogether;  and,  similarly,  if 
the  whole  population  of  the  world  came  to  the  present 
writer  and  promised  meekly  to  do  whatever  it  was 
told,  we  should  find  ourselves  still  very  largely  at 
a  loss  in  our  project  for  a  millennium.  Yet  just  as 
nearly  every  man  at  work  upon  Voltaic  electricity 
in  1850  knew  that  he  was  preparing  for  electric 
traction,  so  do  I  know  quite  certainly  in  spite  of  a 
whole  row  of  unsolved  problems  before  me,  that  I 
am  working  towards  the  Great  State. 

Let  me  briefly  recapitulate  the  main  problems 
which  have  to  be  attacked  in  the  attempt  to  realise 
the  outline  of  the  Great  State.  At  the  base  of  the 
whole  order  there  must  be  some  method  of  agricul- 
tural production,  and  if  the  agricultural  labourer  and 
cottager  and  the  ancient  life  of  the  small  householder 
on  the  holding,  a  life  laborious,  prolific,  illiterate, 
limited,  and  in  immediate  contact  with  the  land 
used,  is  to  recede  and  disappear,  it  must  recede  and 
disappear  before  methods  upon  a  much  larger  scale, 
employing  wholesale  machinery  and  involving  great 
economies.  It  is  alleged  by  modern  writers  that  the 
permanent  residence  of  the  cultivator  in  close  rela- 
tion to  his  ground  is  a  legacy  from  the  days  of  cum- 
brous and  expensive  transit,  that  the  great  propor- 
tion of  farm  work  is  seasonal,  and  that  a  migration 

142 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

to  and  fro  between  rural  and  urban  conditions  would 
be  entirely  practicable  in  a  largely  planned  com- 
munity. The  agricultural  population  could  move 
out  of  town  into  an  open-air  life  as  the  spring  ap- 
proached, and  return  for  spending,  pleasure,  and 
education  as  the  days  shortened.  Already  some- 
thing of  this  sort  occurs  under  extremely  unfavour- 
able conditions  in  the  movement  of  the  fruit  and  hop 
pickers  from  the  east  end  of  London  into  Kent,  but 
that  is  a  mere  hint  of  the  extended  picnic  which  a 
broadly  planned  cultivation  might  afford.  A  fully 
developed  civilisation  employing  machines  in  the 
hands  of  highly  skilled  men  will  minimise  toil  to  the 
very  utmost,  no  man  will  shove  where  a  machine  can 
shove,  or  carry  where  a  machine  can  carry ;  but  there 
will  remain,  more  particularly  in  the  summer,  a  vast 
amount  of  hand  operations,  invigorating  and  even 
attractive  to  the  urban  population.  Given  short 
hours,  good  pay,  and  all  the  jolly  amusement  in  the 
evening  camp  that  a  free,  happy,  and  intelligent 
people  will  develop  for  themselves,  and  there  will  be 
little  difficulty  about  this  particular  class  of  work  to 
differentiate  it  from  any  other  sort  of  necessary 
labour. 

One  passes,  therefore,  with  no  definite  transition 
from  the  root  problem  of  agricultural  production  in 
the  Great  State  to  the  wider  problem  of  labour  in 
general. 

A  glance  at  the  countryside  conjures  up  a  picture 
of  extensive  tracts  being  cultivated  on  a  wholesale 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

scale,  of  skilled  men  directing  great  ploughing,  sow- 
ing, and  reaping  plants,  steering  cattle  and  sheep 
about  carefully  designed  enclosures,  constructing 
channels  and  guiding  sewage  towards  its  proper 
destination  on  the  fields,  and  then  of  added  crowds 
of  genial  people  coming  out  to  spray  trees  and  plants, 
pick  and  sort  and  pack  fruits.  But  who  are  these 
people?  Why  are  they  in  particular  doing  this  for 
the  community?  Is  our  Great  State  still  to  have  a 
majority  of  people  glad  to  do  commonplace  work  for 
mediocre  wages,  and  will  there  be  other  individuals 
who  will  ride  by  on  the  roads,  sympathetically,  no 
doubt,  but  with  a  secret  sense  of  superiority?  So 
one  opens  the  general  problem  of  the  organisation  for 
labour. 

I  am  careful  here  to  write  "for  labour"  and  not 
"of  Labour,"  because  it  is  entirely  against  the  spirit 
of  the  Great  State  that  any  section  of  the  people 
should  be  set  aside  as  a  class  to  do  most  of  the 
monotonous,  laborious,  and  uneventful  things  for  the 
community.  That  is  practically  the  present  arrange- 
ment; and  that,  with  a  quickened  sense  of  the  need 
of  breaking  people  in  to  such  a  life,  is  the  ideal  of  the 
bureaucratic  Servile  State  to  which,  in  common  with 
the  Conservators,  we  are  bitterly  opposed.  And  here 
I  know  I  am  at  my  most  difficult,  most  speculative, 
and  most  revolutionary  point.  We  who  look  to  the 
Great  State  as  the  present  aim  of  human  progress 
believe  a  state  may  solve  its  economic  problem  with- 
out any  section  whatever  of  the  community  being 

144 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

condemned  to  life-long  labour.  And  contemporary 
events,  the  phenomena  of  recent  strikes,  the  phenom- 
ena of  sabotage  carry  out  the  suggestion  that  in  a 
community  where  nearly  everyone  reads  extensively, 
travels  about,  sees  the  charm  and  variety  in  the  lives 
of  prosperous  and  leisurely  people,  no  class  is  going 
to  submit  permanently  to  modern  labour  conditions 
without  extreme  resistance,  even  after  the  most 
elaborate  Labour  Conciliation  schemes  and  social 
minima  are  established.  Things  are  altogether  too 
stimulating  to  the  imagination  nowadays.  Of  all 
impossible  social  dreams  that  belief  in  tranquillised 
and  submissive  and  virtuous  Labour  is  the  wildest 
of  all.  No  sort  of  modern  men  will  stand  it.  They 
will  as  a  class  do  any  vivid  and  disastrous  thing 
rather  than  stand  it.  Even  the  illiterate  peasant 
will  only  endure  life-long  toil  under  the  stimulus  of 
private  ownership  and  with  the  consolations  of 
religion;  and  the  typical  modern  worker  has  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other.  For  a  time,  indeed,  for  a 
generation  or  so  even,  a  labour  mass  may  be  fooled 
or  coerced,  but  in  the  end  it  will  break  out  against 
its  subjection,  even  if  it  breaks  out  to  a  general  social 
catastrophe. 

We  have,  in  fact,  to  invent  for  the  Great  State,  if 
we  are  to  suppose  any  Great  State  at  all,  an  economic 
method  without  any  specific  labour  class.  If  we 
cannot  do  so,  we  had  better  throw  ourselves  in  with 
the  Conservators  forthwith,  for  they  are  right  and 
we  are  absurd.  Adhesion  to  the  conception  of  the 

145 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Great  State  involves  adhesion  to  the  belief  that  the 
amount  of  regular  labour,  skilled  and  unskilled,  re- 
quired to  produce  everything  necessary  for  everyone 
living  in  its  highly  elaborate  civilisation  may,  under 
modern  conditions,  with  the  help  of  scientific  econ- 
omy and  power-producing  machinery,  be  reduced  to 
so  small  a  number  of  working  hours  per  head  in  pro- 
portion to  the  average  life  of  the  citizen,  as  to  be 
met  as  regards  the  greater  moiety  of  it  b£  the  pay- 
ment of  wages  over  and  above  the  gratuitous  share 
of  each  individual  in  the  general  output;  and  as 
regards  the  residue,  a  residue  of  rough,  disagreeable, 
and  monotonous  operations,  by  some  form  of  con- 
scription, which  will  demand  a  year  or  so,  let  us  say, 
of  each  person's  life  for  the  public  service.  If  we 
reflect  that  in  the  contemporary  state  there  is  already 
food,  shelter,  and  clothing  of  a  sort  for  everyone,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  enormous  numbers  of  people  do 
no  productive  work  at  all  because  they  are  too  well 
off,  that  great  numbers  are  out  of  work,  great  num- 
bers by  bad  nutrition  and  training  incapable  of  work, 
and  that  an  enormous  amount  of  the  work  actually 
done  is  the  overlapping  production  of  competitive 
trade  and  work  upon  such  politically  necessary  but 
socially  useless  things  as  Dreadnoughts,  it  becomes 
clear  that  the  absolutely  unavoidable  labour  in  a 
modern  community  and  its  ratio  to  the  available 
vitality  must  be  of  very  small  account  indeed.  But 
all  this  has  still  to  be  worked  out  even  in  the  most 
general  terms.  An  intelligent  science  of  Economics 

146 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

should  afford  standards  and  technicalities  and  sys- 
tematised  facts  upon  which  to  base  an  estimate. 
The  point  was  raised  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
by  Morris  in  his  News  from  Nowhere,  and  indeed 
it  was  already  discussed  by  More  in  his  Utopia, 
Our  contemporary  economics  is,  however,  still  a 
foolish,  pretentious  pseudo-science,  a  festering  mass 
of  assumptions  about  buying  and  selling  and  wages- 
paying,  and  one  would  as  soon  consult  Bradshaw  or 
the  works  of  Dumas  as  our  orthodox  professors  of 
Economics  for  any  light  upon  this  fundamental 
matter. 

Moreover,  we  believe  that  there  is  a  real  dispo- 
sition to  work  in  human  beings,  and  that  in  a  well- 
equipped  community,  in  which  no  one  was  under  an 
unavoidable  urgency  to  work,  the  greater  proportion 
of  productive  operations  could  be  made  sufficiently 
attractive  to  make  them  desirable  occupations.  As 
for  the  irreducible  residue  of  undesirable  toil,  I  owe 
to  my  friend  the  late  Professor  William  James  this 
suggestion  of  a  general  conscription  and  a  period  of 
public  service  for  everyone,  a  suggestion  which 
greatly  occupied  his  thoughts  during  the  last  years 
of  his  life.  He  was  profoundly  convinced  of  the  high 
educational  and  disciplinary  value  of  universal  com- 
pulsory military  service,  and  of  the  need  of  some- 
thing more  than  a  sentimental  ideal  of  duty  in  public 
life.  He  would  have  had  the  whole  population 
taught  in  the  schools  and  prepared  for  this  year  (or 
whatever  period  it  had  to  be)  of  patient  and  heroic 

147 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

labour,  the  men  for  the  mines,  the  fisheries,  the  sani- 
tary services,  railway  routine,  the  women  for  hospital, 
and  perhaps  educational  work,  and  so  forth.  He 
believed  such  a  service  would  permeate  the  whole 
state  with  a  sense  of  civic  obligation.  .  .  . 

But  behind  all  these  conceivable  triumphs  of  scien- 
tific adjustment  and  direction  lies  the  infinitely 
greater  difficulty  on  our  way  to  the  Great  State,  the 
difficulty  of  direction.  What  sort  of  people  are  go- 
ing to  distribute  the  work  of  the  community,  decide 
what  is  or  is  not  to  be  done,  determine  wages, 
initiate  enterprises;  and  under  what  sort  of  criticism, 
checks,  and  controls  are  they  going  to  do  this  delicate 
and  extensive  work?  With  this  we  open  the  whole 
problem  of  government,  administration,  and  offi- 
cialdom. 

The  Marxist  and  the  democratic  socialist  generally 
shirk  this  riddle  altogether;  the  Fabian  conception 
of  a  bureaucracy,  official  to  the  extent  of  being  a  dis- 
tinct class  and  cult,  exists  only  as  a  starting-point 
for  healthy  repudiations.  Whatever  else  may  be 
worked  out  in  the  subtler  answers  our  later  time  pre- 
pares, nothing  can  be  clearer  than  that  the  necessary 
machinery  of  government  must  be  elaborately  or- 
ganised to  prevent  the  development  of  a  managing 
caste  in  permanent  conspiracy,  tacit  or  expressed, 
against  the  normal  man.  Quite  apart  from  the 
danger  of  unsympathetic  and  fatally  irritating  gov- 
ernment, there  can  be  little  or  no  doubt  that  the 
method  of  making  men  officials  for  life  is  quite  the 

148 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

worst  way  of  getting  official  duties  done.  Official- 
dom is  a  species  of  incompetence.  The  rather 
priggish,  teachable,  and  well-behaved  sort  of  boy  who 
is  attracted  by  the  prospect  of  assured  income  and  a 
pension  to  win  his  way  into  the  civil  service,  and  who 
then  by  varied  assiduities  rises  to  a  sort  of  timidly 
vindictive  importance,  is  the  last  person  to  whom 
we  would  willingly  intrust  the  vital  interests  of  a 
nation.  We  want  people  who  know  about  life  at 
large,  who  will  come  to  the  public  service  seasoned 
by  experience,  not  people  who  have  specialised  and 
acquired  that  sort  of  knowledge  which  is  called,  in 
much  the  same  spirit  of  qualification  as  one  speaks 
of  German  Silver,  Expert  Knowledge.  It  is  clear  our 
public  servants  and  officials  must  be  so  only  for  their 
periods  of  service.  They  must  be  taught  by  life,  and 
not  "trained"  by  pedagogues.  In  every  continuing 
job  there  is  a  time  when  one  is  crude  and  blundering, 
a  time,  the  best  time,  when  one  is  full  of  the  freshness 
and  happiness  of  doing  well,  and  a  time  when  routine 
has  largely  replaced  the  stimulus  of  novelty.  The 
Great  State  will,  I  feel  convinced,  regard  changes  in 
occupation  as  a  proper  circumstance  in  the  life  of 
every  citizen;  it  will  value  a  certain  amateurishness 
in  its  service,  and  prefer  it  to  the  trite  omniscience  of 
the  stale  official.  On  that  score  of  the  necessity  for 
versatility,  if  on  no  other  score,  I  am  flatly  antago- 
nistic to  the  conceptions  of  "Guild  Socialism"  which 
has  arisen  recently  out  of  the  impact  of  M.  Penty  and 
Syndicalism  upon  the  uneasy  intelligence  of  M.  Orage. 
11  149 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  since  the  Fabian  socialists  have  created  a 
widespread  belief  that  in  their  projected  state  every 
man  will  be  necessarily  a  public  servant  or  a  public 
pupil  because  the  state  will  be  the  only  employer  and 
the  only  educator,  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  that  the 
Great  State  presupposes  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other.  It  is  a  form  of  liberty  and  not  a  form  of 
enslavement.  We  agree  with  the  older  forms  of 
socialism  in  supposing  an  initial  proprietary  inde- 
pendence in  every  citizen.  The  citizen  is  a  share- 
holder in  the  state.  Above  that  and  after  that,  he 
works  if  he  chooses.  But  if  he  likes  to  live  on  his 
minimum  and  do  nothing — though  such  a  type  of 
character  is  scarcely  conceivable — he  can.  His  earn- 
ing is  his  own  surplus.  Above  the  basal  economics 
of  the  Great  State  we  assume  with  confidence  there 
will  be  a  huge  surplus  of  free  spending  upon  extra- 
collective  ends.  Public  organisations,  for  example, 
may  distribute  impartially  and  possibly  even  print 
and  make  ink  and  paper  for  the  newspapers  in  the 
Great  State,  but  they  will  certainly  not  own  them. 
Only  doctrine-driven  men  have  ever  ventured  to 
think  they  would.  Nor  will  the  state  control  writers 
and  artists,  for  example,  nor  the  state — though  it 
may  build  and  own  theatres — the  tailor,  the  dress- 
maker, the  restaurant  cook,  an  enormous  multitude 
of  other  busy  workers-for-preferences.  In  the  Great 
State  of  the  future,  as  in  the  life  of  the  more  pros- 
perous classes  of  to-day,  the  greater  proportion  of 
occupations  and  activities  will  be  private  and  free. 

150 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

I  would  like  to  underline  in  the  most  emphatic 
way  that  it  is  possible  to  have  this  Great  State, 
essentially  socialistic,  owning  and  running  the  land 
and  all  the  great  public  services,  sustaining  every- 
body in  absolute  freedom  at  a  certain  minimum  of 
comfort  and  well-being,  and  still  leaving  most  of  the 
interests,  amusements,  and  adornments  of  the  indi- 
vidual life,  and  all  sorts  of  collective  concerns,  social 
and  political  discussion,  religious  worship,  philoso- 
phy, and  the  like  to  the  free  personal  initiatives  of 
entirely  unofficial  people. 

This  still  leaves  the  problem  of  systematic  knowl- 
edge and  research,  and  all  the  associated  problems  of 
aesthetic,  moral,  and  intellectual  initiative  to  be 
worked  out  in  detail;  but  at  least  it  dispels  the 
nightmare  of  a  collective  mind  organised  as  a  branch 
of  the  civil  service,  with  authors,  critics,  artists, 
scientific  investigators  appointed  in  a  phrensy  of 
wire-pulling  —  as  nowadays  the  British  state  ap- 
points its  bishops  for  the  care  of  its  collective 
soul. 

Let  me  now  indicate  how  these  general  views 
affect  the  problem  of  family  organisation  and  the 
problem  of  women's  freedom.  In  the  Normal  Social 
Life  the  position  of  women  is  easily  defined.  They 
are  subordinated  but  important.  The  citizenship 
rests  with  the  man,  and  the  woman's  relation  to  the 
community  as  a  whole  is  through  a  man.  But 
within  that  limitation  her  functions  as  mother,  wife, 
and  home-maker  are  cardinal.  It  is  one  of  the  en- 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

tirely  unforeseen  consequences  that  have  arisen  from 
the  decay  of  the  Normal  Social  Life  and  its  autono- 
mous home  that  great  numbers  of  women  while  still 
subordinate  have  become  profoundly  unimportant. 
They  have  ceased  to  a  very  large  extent  to  bear  chil- 
dren, they  have  dropped  most  of  their  home-making 
arts,  they  no  longer  nurse  nor  educate  such  children 
as  they  have,  and  they  have  taken  on  no  new 
functions  that  compensate  for  these  dwindling  ac- 
tivities of  the  domestic  interior.  That  subjugation 
which  is  a  vital  condition  to  the  Normal  Social  Life 
does  not  seem  to  be  necessary  to  the  Great  State. 
It  may  or  it  may  not  be  necessary.  And  here  we 
enter  upon  the  most  difficult  of  all  our  problems. 
The  whole  spirit  of  the  Great  State  is  against  any 
avoidable  subjugation;  but  the  whole  spirit  of  that 
science  which  will  animate  the  Great  State  forbids 
us  to  ignore  woman's  functional  and  temperamental 
differences.  A  new  status  has  still  to  be  invented 
for  women,  a  Feminine  Citizenship  differing  in  cer- 
tain respects  from  the  normal  masculine  citizenship. 
Its  conditions  remain  to  be  worked  out.  We  have 
indeed  to  work  out  an  entire  new  system  of  relations 
between  men  and  women,  that  will  be  free  from 
servitude,  aggression,  provocation,  or  parasitism. 
The  public  Endowment  of  Motherhood  as  such  may 
perhaps  be  the  first  broad  suggestion  of  the  quality 
of  this  new  status.  A  new  type  of  family,  a  mutual 
alliance  in  the  place  of  a  subjugation,  is  perhaps  the 
most  startling  of  all  the  conceptions  which  confront 

152 


THE  GREAT  STATE 

us  directly  we  turn  ourselves  definitely  towards  the 
Great  State. 

And  as  our  conception  of  the  Great  State  grows, 
so  we  shall  begin  to  realise  the  nature  of  the  problem 
of  transition,  the  problem  of  what  we  may  best  do 
in  the  confusion  of  the  present  time  to  elucidate  and 
render  practicable  this  new  phase  of  human  organisa- 
tion. Of  one  thing  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that  what- 
ever increases  thought  and  knowledge  moves  towards 
our  goal ;  and  equally  certain  is  it  that  nothing  leads 
thither  that  tampers  with  the  freedom  of  spirit,  the  in- 
dependence of  soul  in  common  men  and  women.  In 
many  directions,  therefore,  the  believer  in  the  Great 
State  will  display  a  jealous  watchfulness  of  contempo- 
rary developments  rather  than  a  premature  construct- 
iveness.  We  must  watch  wealth ;  but  quite  as  necessary 
it  is  to  watch  the  legislator,  who  mistakes  propaganda 
for  progress  and  class  exasperation  to  satisfy  class  vin- 
dictiveness  for  construction.  Supremely  important  is 
it  to  keep  discussion  open,  to  tolerate  no  limitation  on 
the  freedom  of  speech,  writing,  art  and  book  distribu- 
tion, and  to  sustain  the  utmost  liberty  of  criticism 
upon  all  contemporary  institutions  and  processes. 

This  briefly  is  the  programme  of  problems  and 
effort  to  which  my  idea  of  the  Great  State,  as  the 
goal  of  contemporary  progress,  leads  me. 

I  append  a  diagram  which  shows  compactly  the 
gist  of  the  preceding  discussion ;  it  gives  the  view  of 
social  development  upon  which  I  base  all  my  political 
conceptions. 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 


THE  NORMAL  SOCIAL  LIFE 


produces  an  increasing  surplus  of  energy  and  opportunity,  more 
particularly  under  modern  conditions  of  scientific  organisation 
and  power  production;  and  this  through  the  operation  of  rent  and 
of  usury  generally  tends  to 


(a)  release  and  (b)  expropriate 

an  increasing  proportion  of  the  population  to  become: 


(a)    A   LEISURE   CLASS 

under  no  urgent  compulsion 
to  work 

3  2  I 


and          (b)  A  LABOUR  CLASS 

divorced  from  the  land  and  liv- 
ing upon  uncertain  wages 
I  23 


which  may  become 
the  whole  community 
of  the  GREAT  STATE 
working  under  vari- 
ous motives  and  in- 
ducements, but  not 
constantly,  nor  per- 
manently, nor  un- 
willingly. 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

§  i — CONSCRIPTION 

I  WANT  to  say  as  compactly  as  possible  why  I  do 
not  believe  that  conscription  would  increase  the 
military  efficiency  of  this  country,  and  why  I  think 
it  might  be  a  disastrous  step  for  this  country  to  take. 

By  conscription  I  mean  the  compulsory  enlist- 
ment for  a  term  of  service  in  the  Army  of  the  whole 
manhood  of  the  country.  And  I  am  writing  now 
from  the  point  of  view  merely  of  military  effective- 
ness. The  educational  value  of  a  universal  national 
service,  the  idea  which  as  a  Socialist  I  support  very 
heartily,  of  making  every  citizen  give  a  year  or  so 
of  his  life  to  our  public  needs,  are  matters  quite  out- 
side my  present  discussion.  What  I  am  writing 
about  now  is  this  idea  that  the  country  can  be 
strengthened  for  war  by  making  every  man  in  it  a 
bit  of  a  soldier. 

And  I  want  the  reader  to  be  perfectly  clear  about 
the  position  I  assume  with  regard  to  war  prepara- 
tions generally.  I  am  not  pleading  for  peace  when 
there  is  no  peace;  this  country  has  been  constantly 
threatened  during  the  past  decade,  and  is  threatened 
now  by  gigantic  hostile  preparations;  it  is  our  com- 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

mon  interest  to  be  and  to  keep  at  the  maximum  of 
military  efficiency  possible  to  us.  My  case  is  not 
merely  that  conscription  will  not  contribute  to  that, 
but  that  it  would  be  a  monstrous  diversion  of  our 
energy  and  emotion  and  material  resources  from  the 
things  that  need  urgently  to  be  done.  It  would  be 
like  a  boxer  filling  his  arms  with  empty  boxing- 
gloves  and  then  rushing — his  face  protruding  over 
the  armful — into  the  fray. 

Let  me  make  my  attack  on  this  prevalent  and 
increasing  superstition  of  the  British  need  for  con- 
scription in  two  lines,  one  following  the  other.  For, 
firstly,  it  is  true  that  Britain  at  the  present  time  is 
no  more  capable  of  creating  such  a  conscript  army  as 
France  or  Germany  possesses  in  the  next  ten  years 
than  she  is  of  covering  her  soil  with  a  tropical  forest, 
and,  secondly,  it  is  equally  true  that  if  she  had  such 
an  army  it  would  not  be  of  the  slightest  use  to  her. 
For  the  conscript  armies  in  which  Europe  still  so 
largely  believes  are  only  of  use  against  conscript 
armies  and  adversaries  who  will  consent  to  play  the 
rules  of  the  German  war  game;  they  are,  if  we  chose 
to  determine  they  shall  be,  if  we  chose  to  deal  with 
them  as  they  should  be  dealt  with,  as  out  of  date  as 
a  Roman  legion  or  a  Zulu  impi. 

Now,  first,  as  to  the  impossibility  of  getting  our 
great  army  into  existence.  All  those  people  who 
write  and  talk  so  glibly  in  favour  of  conscription 
seem  to  forget  that  to  take  a  common  man,  and  more 
particularly  a  townsman,  clap  him  into  a  uniform  and 

156 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

put  a  rifle  in  his  hand  does  not  make  a  soldier.  He 
has  to  be  taught  not  only  the  use  of  his  weapons,  but 
the  methods  of  a  strange  and  unfamiliar  life  out  of 
doors;  he  has  to  be  not  simply  drilled,  but  accus- 
tomed to  the  difficult  modern  necessities  of  open  order 
fighting,  of  taking  cover,  of  entrenchment,  and  he  has 
to  have  created  within  him,  so  that  it  will  stand  the 
shock  of  seeing  men  killed  round  about  him,  con- 
fidence in  himself,  in  his  officers,  and  the  methods 
and  weapons  of  his  side.  Body,  mind,  and  imagi- 
nation have  all  to  be  trained — and  they  need  trainers. 
The  conversion  of  a  thousand  citizens  into  anything 
better  than  a  sheep-like  militia  demands  the  en- 
thusiastic services  of  scores  of  able  and  experienced 
instructors  who  know  what  war  is;  the  creation  of  a 
universal  army  demands  the  services  of  many  scores 
of  thousands  of  not  simply  "old  soldiers,"  but  keen, 
expert,  modern-minded  officers. 

Without  these  officers  our  citizen  army  would  be 
a  hydra  without  heads.  And  we  haven't  these 
officers.  We  haven't  a  tithe  of  them. 

We  haven't  these  officers,  and  we  can't  make  them 
in  a  hurry.  It  takes  at  least  five  years  to  make  an 
officer  who  knows  his  trade.  It  needs  a  special  gift, 
in  addition  to  that  knowledge,  to  make  a  man  able 
to  impart  it.  And  our  Empire  is  at  a  peculiar  dis- 
advantage in  the  matter,  because  India  and  our  other 
vast  areas  of  service  and  opportunity  overseas  drain 
away  a  large  proportion  of  just  those  able  and  edu- 
cated men  who  would  in  other  countries  gravitate 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

towards  the  army.  Such  small  wealth  of  officers  as 
we  have — and  I  am  quite  prepared  to  believe  that 
the  officers  we  have  are  among  the  very  best  in  the 
world — are  scarcely  enough  to  go  round  our  present 
supply  of  private  soldiers.  And  the  best  and  most 
brilliant  among  this  scanty  supply  are  being  drawn 
upon  more  and  more  for  aerial  work,  and  for  all  that 
increasing  quantity  of  highly  specialised  services 
which  are  manifestly  destined  to  be  the  real  fighting 
forces  of  the  future.  We  cannot  spare  the  best  of 
our  officers  for  training  conscripts;  we  shall  get  the 
dismalest  results  from  the  worst  of  them;  and  so 
even  if  it  were  a  vital  necessity  for  our  country  to 
have  an  army  of  all  its  manhood  now,  we  could  not 
have  it,  and  it  would  be  a  mere  last  convulsion  to 
attempt  to  make  it  with  the  means  at  our  disposal. 
But  that  brings  me  to  my  second  contention, 
which  is  that  we  do  not  want  such  an  army.  I 
believe  that  the  vast  masses  of  men  in  uniform  main- 
tained by  the  Continental  Powers  at  the  present 
time  are  enormously  overrated  as  fighting  machines. 
I  see  Germany  in  the  likeness  of  a  boxer  with  a 
mailed  fist  as  big  as  and  rather  heavier'  than  its  body, 
and  I  am  convinced  that  when  the  moment  conies  for 
that  mailed  fist  to  be  lifted,  the  whole  disproportion- 
ate system  will  topple  over.  The  military  ascend- 
ancy of  the  future  lies  with  the  country  that  dares 
to  experiment  most,  that  experiments  best,  and 
meanwhile  keeps  its  actual  fighting  force  fit  and 
admirable  and  small  and  flexible.  The  experience 

158 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

of  war  during  the  last  fifteen  years  has  been  to  show 
repeatedly  the  enormous  defensive  power  of  small, 
scientifically  handled  bodies  of  men.  These  huge 
conscript  armies  are  made  up  not  of  masses  of  mili- 
tary muscle,  but  of  a  huge  proportion  of  military  fat. 
Their  one  way  of  fighting  will  be  to  fall  upon  an 
antagonist  with  all  their  available  weight,  and  if  he 
is  mobile  and  dexterous  enough  to  decline  that  issue 
of  adiposity  they  will  become  a  mere  embarrassment 
to  their  own  people.  Modern  weapons  and  modern 
contrivance  are  continually  decreasing  the  number  of 
men  who  can  be  employed  efficiently  upon  a  length 
of  front.  I  doubt  if  there  is  any  use  for  more  than 
400,000  men  upon  the  whole  Franco-Belgian  frontier 
at  the  present  time.  Such  an  army,  properly  sup- 
plied, could — so  far  as  terrestrial  forces  are  concerned 
— hold  that  frontier  against  any  number  of  assailants. 
The  bigger  the  forces  brought  against  it  the  sooner 
the  exhaustion  of  the  attacking  power.  Now,  it  is 
for  employment  upon  that  frontier,  and  for  no  other 
conceivable  purpose  in  the  world,  that  Great  Britain 
is  asked  to  create  a  gigantic  conscript  army. 

And  if  too  big  an  army  is  likely  to  be  a  mere  en- 
cumbrance in  war,  it  is  perhaps  even  a  still  graver 
blunder  to  maintain  one  during  that  conflict  of 
preparation  which  is  at  present  the  European  sub- 
stitute for  actual  hostilities.  It  consumes.  It  pro- 
duces nothing.  It  not  only  eats  and  drinks  and 
wears  out  its  clothes  and  withdraws  men  from  in- 
dustry, but  under  the  stress  of  invention  it  needs 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

constantly  to  be  rearmed  and  freshly  equipped  at 
an  expenditure  proportionate  to  its  size.  So  long 
as  the  conflict  of  preparation  goes  on,  then  the  bigger 
the  army  your  adversary  maintains  under  arms  the 
bigger  is  his  expenditure  and  the  less  his  earning 
power.  The  less  the  force  you  employ  to  keep  your 
adversary  overarmed,  and  the  longer  you  remain  at 
peace  with  him  while  he  is  overarmed,  the  greater  is 
your  advantage.  There  is  only  one  profitable  use 
for  any  army,  and  that  is  victorious  conflict.  Every 
army  that  is  not  engaged  in  victorious  conflict  is  an 
organ  of  national  expenditure,  an  exhausting  growth 
in  the  national  body.  And  for  Great  Britain  an 
attempt  to  create  a  conscript  army  would  involve  the 
very  maximum  of  moral  and  material  exhaustion 
with  the  minimum  of  military  efficiency.  It  would 
be  a  disastrous  waste  of  resources  that  we  need  most 
urgently  for  other  things. 

§2 

In  the  popular  imagination  the  Dreadnought  is 
still  the  one  instrument  of  naval  war.  We  count  our 
strength  in  Dreadnoughts  and  super- Dreadnoughts, 
and  so  long  as  we  are  spending  our  national  resources 
upon  them  faster  than  any  other  country,  if  we  sink 
at  least  £160  for  every  £100  sunk  in  these  obsolescent 
monsters  by  Germany,  we  have  a  reassuring  sense  of 
keeping  ahead  and  being  thoroughly  safe.  This 
confidence  in  big,  very  expensive  battleships  is,  I 

1 60 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

believe  and  hope,  shared  by  the  German  Govern- 
ment and  by  Europe  generally,  but  it  is,  nevertheless, 
a  very  unreasonable  confidence,  and  it  may  easily 
lead  us  into  the  most  tragic  of  national  disillusion- 
ments. 

We  of  the  general  public  are  led  to  suppose  that 
the  next  naval  war — if  ever  we  engage  in  another 
naval  war — will  begin  with  a  decisive  fleet  action. 
The  plan  of  action  is  presented  with  an  alluring  sim- 
plicity. Our  adversary  will  come  out  to  us,  in  a 
ratio  of  10  to  1 6,  or  in  some  ratio  still  more  advan- 
tageous to  us,  according  as  our  adversary  happens  to 
be  this  Power  or  that  Power,  there  will  be  some  tre- 
mendous business  with  guns  and  torpedoes,  and  our 
admirals  will  return  victorious  to  discuss  the  disci- 
pline and  details  of  the  battle  and  each  other's  little 
weaknesses  in  the  monthly  magazines.  This  is  a 
desirable  but  improbable  anticipation.  No  hostile 
Power  is  in  the  least  likely  to  send  out  any  battle- 
ships at  all  against  our  invincible  Dreadnoughts. 
They  will  promenade  the  seas,  always  in  the  ratio  of 
1 6  or  more  to  10,  looking  for  fleets  securely  tucked 
away  out  of  reach.  They  will  not,  of  course,  go  too 
near  the  enemy's  coast,  on  account  of  mines,  and, 
meanwhile,  our  cruisers  will  hunt  the  enemy's  com- 
merce into  port. 

Then  other  things  will  happen. 

The  enemy  we  shall  discover  using  unsportsman- 
like devices  against  our  capital  ships.  Unless  he  is 
a  lunatic  he  will  prove  to  be  much  stronger  in  reality 

161 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

than  he  is  on  paper  in  the  matter  of  submarines, 
torpedo-boats,  waterplanes-and  aeroplanes.  These 
are  things  cheap  to  make  and  easy  to  conceal.  He 
will  be  richly  stocked  with  ingenious  devices  for 
getting  explosives  up  to  these  two  -  million  -  pound 
triumphs  of  our  naval  engineering.  On  the  cloudy 
and  foggy  nights  so  frequent  about  these  islands  he 
will  have  extraordinary  chances,  and  sooner  or  later, 
unless  we  beat  him  thoroughly  in  the  air  above  and 
in  the  waters  beneath,  for  neither  of  which  proceed- 
ings we  are  prepared,  some  of  these  chances  will 
come  off,  and  we  shall  lose  a  Dreadnought. 

It  will  be  a  poor  consolation  if  an  ill-advised  and 
stranded  Zeppelin  or  so  enlivens  the  quiet  of  the 
English  countryside  by  coming  down  and  capitu- 
lating. It  will  be  a  trifling  countershock  to  wing  an 
aeroplane  or  so,  or  blow  a  torpedo-boat  out  of  the 
water.  Our  Dreadnoughts  will  cease  to  be  a  source 
of  unmitigated  confidence.  A  second  battleship  dis- 
aster will  excite  the  Press  extremely.  A  third  will 
probably  lead  to  a  retirement  of  the  battle  fleet  to 
some  east -coast  harbour,  a  refuge  liable  to  aero- 
planes, or  to  the  west  coast  of  Ireland — and  the  real 
naval  war,  which,  as  I  have  argued  in  an  earlier 
chapter,  will  be  a  war  of  destroyers,  submarines  and 
hydroplanes,  will  begin.  Incidentally  a  commerce 
destroyer  may  take  advantage  of  the  retirement  of 
our  fleet  to  raid  our  trade  routes. 

We  shall  then  realise  that  the  actual  naval  weapons 
are  these  smaller  weapons,  and  especially  the  de- 

162 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

stroyer,  the  submarine,  and  the  waterplane — the 
waterplane  most  of  all,  because  of  its  possibilities  of 
a  comparative  bigness — in  the  hands  of  competent 
and  daring  men.  And  I  find  myself,  as  a  patriotic 
Englishman,  more  and  more  troubled  by  doubts 
whether  we  are  as  certainly  superior  to  any  possible 
adversary  in  these  essential  things  as  we  are  in  the 
matter  of  Dreadnoughts.  I  find  myself  awake  at 
nights,  after  a  day  much  agitated  by  a  belligerent 
Press,  wondering  whether  the  real  Empire  of  the 
Sea  may  not  even  now  have  slipped  out  of  our  hands 
while  our  attention  has  been  fixed  on  our  stately  pro- 
cession of  giant  warships,  while  our  country  has  been 
in  a  dream,  hypnotised  by  the  Dreadnought  idea. 

For  some  years  there  seems  to  have  been  a  com- 
plete arrest  of  the  British  imagination  in  naval  and 
military  matters.  That  declining  faculty,  never  a 
very  active  or  well-exercised  one,  staggered  up  to 
the  conception  of  a  Dreadnought,  and  seems  now  to 
have  sat  down  for  good.  Its  reply  to  every  demand 
upon  it  has  been  ' '  more  Dreadnoughts. ' '  The  future, 
as  we  British  seem  to  see  it,  is  an  avenue  of  Dread- 
noughts, and  super-Dreadnoughts  and  super-super- 
Dreadnoughts,  getting  bigger  and  bigger  in  a  kind 
of  inverted  perspective.  But  the  ascendancy  of 
fleets  of  great  battleships  in  naval  warfare,  like  the 
phase  of  huge  conscript  armies  upon  land,  draws  to 
its  close.  The  progress  of  invention  makes  both  the 
big  ship  and  the  army  crowd  more  and  more  vulner- 
able and  less  and  less  effective.  A  new  phase  of 

163 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

warfare  opens  beyond  the  vista  of  our  current 
programmes.  Smaller,  more  numerous  and  various 
and  mobile  weapons  and  craft  and  contrivances, 
manned  by  daring  and  highly  skilled  men,  must 
ultimately  take  the  place  of  those  massivenesses. 
We  are  entering  upon  a  period  in  which  the  invention 
of  methods  and  material  for  war  is  likely  to  be  more 
rapid  and  diversified  than  it  has  ever  been  before, 
and  the  question  of  what  we  have  been  doing  behind 
the  splendid  line  of  our  Dreadnoughts  to  meet  the 
demands  of  this  new  phase  is  one  of  supreme  im- 
portance. Knowing,  as  I  do,  the  imaginative  indo- 
lence of  my  countrymen,  it  is  a  question  I  face  with 
something  very  near  to  dismay. 

But  it  is  one  that  has  to  be  faced.  The  question 
that  should  occupy  our  directing  minds  now  is  no 
longer  "How  can  we  get  more  Dreadnoughts?"  but 
"What  have  we  to  follow  the  Dreadnought?" 

To  the  Power  that  has  most  nearly  guessed  the 
answer  to  that  riddle  belongs  the  future  Empire  of 
the  Seas.  It  is  interesting  to  guess  for  oneself  and 
to  speculate  upon  the  possibility  of  a  kind  of  ar- 
moured mother-ship  for  waterplanes  and  submarines 
and  torpedo  craft,  but  necessarily  that  would  be  a 
mere  journalistic  and  amateurish  guessing.  I  am  not 
guessing,  but  asking  urgent  questions.  What  force, 
what  council,  how  many  imaginative  and  inventive 
men  has  the  country  got  at  the  present  time  employed 
not  casually  but  professionally  in  anticipating  the 
new  strategy,  the  new  tactics,  the  new  material,  the 

164 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

new  training  that  invention  is  so  rapidly  rendering 
necessary?  I  have  the  gravest  doubts  whether  we 
are  doing  anything  systematic  at  all  in  this  way. 

Now,  it  is  the  tremendous  seriousness  of  this  de- 
ficiency to  which  I  want  to  call  attention.  Great 
Britain  has  in  her  armour  a  gap  more  dangerous  and 
vital  than  any  mere  numerical  insufficiency  of  men 
or  ships.  She  is  short  of  minds.  Behind  its  strength 
of  current  armaments  to-day,  a  strength  that  begins 
to  evaporate  and  grow  obsolete  from  the  very  mo- 
ment it  comes  into  being,  a  country  needs  more  and 
more  this  profounder  strength  of  intellectual  and 
creative  activity. 

This  country  most  of  all,  which  was  left  so  far 
behind  in  the  production  of  submarines,  airships  and 
areoplanes,  must  be  made  to  realise  the  folly  of  its 
trust  in  established  things.  Each  new  thing  we  take 
up  more  belatedly  and  reluctantly  than  its  prede- 
cessor. The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  we  shall 
be  "caught"  lagging  unless  we  change  all  this. 

We  need  a  new  arm  to  our  service;  we  need  it 
urgently,  and  we  shall  need  it  more  and  more,  and 
that  arm  is  Research.  We  need  to  place  inquiry  and 
experiment  upon  a  new  footing  altogether,  to  enlist 
for  them  and  organise  them,  to  secure  the  pick  of  our 
young  chemists  and  physicists  and  engineers,  and  to 
get  them  to  work  systematically  upon  the  anticipa- 
tion and  preparation  of  our  future  war  equipment. 
We  need  a  service  of  invention  to  recover  our  lost 
lead  in  these  matters. 

12  165 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  it  is  because  I  feel  so  keenly  the  want  of  such 
a  service,  and  the  want  of  great  sums  of  money  for 
it,  that  I  deplore  the  disposition  to  waste  millions 
upon  the  hasty  creation  of  a  universal  service  army 
and  upon  excessive  Dreadnoughting.  I  am  con- 
vinced that  we  are  spending  upon  the  things  of  yes- 
terday the  money  that  is  sorely  needed  for  the 
things  of  to-morrow. 

With  our  eyes  averted  obstinately  from  the  future 
we  are  backing  towards  disaster. 

§3 

In  the  present  armament  competition  there  are 
certain  considerations  that  appear  to  be  almost  uni- 
versally overlooked,  and  which  tend  to  modify  our 
views  profoundly  of  what  should  be  done.  Ulti- 
mately they  will  affect  our  entire  expenditure  upon 
war  preparation. 

Expenditure  upon  preparation  for  war  falls, 
roughly,  into  two  classes;  there  is  expenditure  upon 
things  that  have  a  diminishing  value,  things  that 
grow  old-fashioned  and  wear  out,  such  as  fortifica- 
tions, ships,  guns,  and  ammunition,  and  expenditure 
upon  things  that  have  a  permanent  and  even  growing 
value,  such  as  organised  technical  research,  military 
and  naval  experiment,  and  the  education  and  increase 
of  a  highly  trained  class  of  war  experts. 

I  want  to  suggest  that  we  are  spending  too  much 
money  in  the  former  and  not  enough  in  the  latter 

1 66 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

direction.  We  are  buying  enormous  quantities  of 
stuff  that  will  be  old  iron  in  twenty  years'  time,  and 
we  are  starving  ourselves  of  that  which  cannot  be 
bought  or  made  in  a  hurry,  and  upon  which  the 
strength  of  nations  ultimately  rests  altogether;  we 
are  failing  to  get  and  maintain  a  sufficiency  of  highly 
educated  and  developed  men  inspired  by  a  tradition 
of  service  and  efficiency. 

No  doubt  we  must  be  armed  to-day,  but  every 
penny  we  divert  from  men-making  and  knowledge- 
making  to  armament  beyond  the  margin  of  bare 
safety  is  a  sacrifice  of  the  future  to  the  present. 
Every  penny  we  divert  from  national  wealth-making 
to  national  weapons  means  so  much  less  in  resources, 
so  much  more  strain  in  the  years  ahead.  But  a 
great  system  of  laboratories  and  experimental  sta- 
tions, a  systematic,  industrious  increase  of  men  of 
the  officer-aviator  type,  of  the  research  student  type, 
of  the  engineer  type,  of  the  naval-officer  type,  of  the 
skilled  sergeant-instructor  type,  a  methodical  de- 
velopment of  a  common  sentiment  and  a  common 
zeal  among  such  a  body  of  men,  is  an  added  strength 
that  grows  greater  from  the  moment  you  call  it  into 
being.  In  our  schools  and  military  and  naval  col- 
leges lies  the  proper  field  for  expenditure  upon  prepa- 
ration for  our  ultimate  triumph  in  war.  All  other 
war  preparation  is  temporary  but  that. 

This  would  be  obvious  in  any  case,  but  what  makes 
insistence  upon  it  peculiarly  urgent  is  the  manifestly 
temporary  nature  of  the  present  European  situation 

167 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  the  fact  that  within  quite  a  small  number  of 
years  our  war  front  will  be  turned  in  a  direction  quite 
other  than  that  to  which  it  faces  now. 

For  a  decade  and  more  all  Western  Europe  has 
been  threatened  by  German  truculence;  the  German, 
inflamed  by  the  victories  of  1870  and  1871,  has 
poured  out  his  energy  in  preparation  for  war  by  sea 
and  land,  and  it  has  been  the  difficult  task  of  France 
and  England  to  keep  the  peace  with  him.  The 
German  has  been  the  provocator  and  leader  of  all 
modern  armaments.  But  that  is  not  going  on.  It  is 
already  more  than  half  over.  If  we  can  avert  war 
with  Germany  for  twenty  years,  we  shall  never  have 
to  fight  Germany.  In  twenty  years'  time  we  shall 
be  talking  no  more  of  sending  troops  to  fight  side 
by  side  on  the  frontier  of  France;  we  shall  be  talking 
of  sending  troops  to  fight  side  by  side  with  French 
and  Germans  on  the  frontiers  of  Poland. 

And  the  justification  of  that  prophecy  is  a  perfectly 
plain  one.  The  German  has  filled  up  his  country, 
his  birth-rate  falls,  and  the  very  vigour  of  his  military 
and  naval  preparations,  by  raising  the  cost  of  living, 
hurries  it  down.  His  birth-rate  falls  as  ours  and  the 
Frenchman's  falls,  because  he  is  nearing  his  maximum 
of  population.  It  is  an  inevitable  consequence  of  his 
geographical  conditions.  But  eastward  of  him,  from 
his  eastern  boundaries  to  the  Pacific,  is  a  country 
already  too  populous  to  conquer,  but  with  possibili- 
ties of  further  expansion  that  are  gigantic.  The  Slav 
will  be  free  to  increase  and  multiply  for  another 

1 68 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

hundred  years.  Eastward  and  southward  bristle  the 
Slavs,  and  behind  the  Slavs  are  the  colossal  possi- 
bilities of  Asia. 

Even  German  vanity,  even  the  preposterous  am- 
bitions that  spring  from  that  brief  triumph  of  Sedan, 
must  awaken  at  last  to  these  manifest  facts,  and  on 
the  day  when  Germany  is  fully  awake  we  may  count 
the  Western  European  Armageddon  as  "off"  and 
turn  our  eyes  to  the  greater  needs  that  will  arise 
beyond  Germany.  The  old  game  will  be  over  and  a 
quite  different  new  game  will  begin  in  international 
relations. 

During  these  last  few  years  of  worry  and  bluster 
across  the  North  Sea  we  have  a  little  forgotten  India 
in  our  calculations.  As  Germany  faces  round  east- 
ward again,  as  she  must  do  before  very  long,  we  shall 
find  India  resuming  its  former  central  position  in  our 
ideas  of  international  politics.  With  India  we  may 
pursue  one  of  two  policies :  we  may  keep  her  divided 
and  inefficient  for  war,  as  she  is  at  present,  and  hold 
her  and  own  her  and  defend  her  as  a  prize,  or  we 
may  arm  her  and  assist  her  development  into  a  group 
of  quasi-independent  English-speaking  States — in 
which  case  she  will  become  our  partner  and  possibly 
at  last  even  our  senior  partner.  But  that  is  by  the 
way.  What  I  am  pointing  out  now  is  that  whether 
we  fight  Germany  or  not,  a  time  is  drawing  near 
when  Germany  will  cease  to  be  our  war  objective  and 
we  shall  cease  to  be  Germany's  war  objective,  and 
when  there  will  have  to  be  a  complete  revision  of  our 

169 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

military  and  naval  equipment  in  relation  to  those 
remoter,  vaster  Asiatic  possibilities. 

Now  that  possible  campaign  away  there,  whatever 
its  particular  nature  may  be,  which  will  be  shaping 
our  military  and  naval  policy  in  the  year  1933  or 
thereabouts,  will  certainly  be  quite  different  in  its 
conditions  from  the  possible  campaign  in  Europe  and 
the  narrow  seas  which  determines  all  our  prepara- 
tions now.  We  cannot  contemplate  throwing  an 
army  of  a  million  British  conscripts  on  to  the  North- 
West  Frontier  of  India,  and  a  fleet  of  super-Dread- 
noughts will  be  ineffective  either  in  Thibet  or  the 
Baltic  shallows.  All  our  present  stuff,  indeed,  will 
be  on  the  scrap-heap  then.  What  will  not  be  on  the 
scrap-heap  will  be  such  enterprise  and  special  science 
and  inventive  power  as  we  have  got  together.  That 
is  versatile.  That  is  good  to  have  now  and  that  will 
be  good  to  have  then. 

Everyone  nowadays  seems  demanding  increased 
expenditure  upon  war  preparation.  I  will  follow  the 
fashion.  I  will  suggest  that  we  have  the  courage  to 
restrain  and  even  to  curtail  our  monstrous  outlay 
upon  war  material  and  that  we  begin  to  spend 
lavishly  upon  military  and  naval  education  and 
training,  upon  laboratories  and  experimental  stations, 
upon  chemical  and  physical  research  and  all  that 
makes  knowledge  and  leading,  and  that  we  increase 
our  expenditure  upon  these  things  as  fast  as  we  can 
up  to  ten  or  twelve  millions  a  year.  At  present  we 
spend  about  eighteen  and  a  half  millions  a  year  upon 

170 


THE  COMMON  SENSE  OF  WARFARE 

education  out  of  our  national  funds,  but  fourteen  and 
a  half  of  this,  supplemented  by  about  as  much  again 
from  local  sources,  is  consumed  in  merely  elementary 
teaching.  So  that  we  spend  only  about  four  millions 
a  year  of  public  money  on  every  sort  of  research  and 
education  above  the  simple  democratic  level.  Nearly 
thirty  millions  for  the  foundations  and  only  a  seventh 
for  the  edifice  of  will  and  science!  Is  it  any  marvel 
that  we  are  a  badly  organised  nation,  a  nation  of  very 
widely  diffused  intelligence  and  very  second-rate 
guidance  and  achievement?  Is  it  any  marvel  that 
directly  we  are  tested  by  such  a  new  development  as 
that  of  aeroplanes  or  airships  we  show  ourselves  in 
comparison  with  the  more  braced-up  nations  of  the 
Continent  backward,  unorganised,  unimaginative, 
unenterprising? 

Our  supreme  want  to-day,  if  we  are  to  continue  a 
belligerent  people,  is  a  greater  supply  of  able  edu- 
cated men,  versatile  men  capable  of  engines,  of 
aviation,  of  invention,  of  leading  and  initiative.  We 
need  more  laboratories,  more  scholarships  out  of  the 
general  mass  of  elementary  scholars,  a  quasi-military 
discipline  in  our  colleges  and  a  great  array  of  new 
colleges,  a  much  readier  access  to  instruction  in 
aviation  and  military  and  naval  practice.  And  if 
we  are  to  have  national  service  let  us  begin  with  it 
where  it  is  needed  most  and  where  it  is  least  likely 
to  disorganise  our  social  and  economic  life;  let  us 
begin  at  the  top.  Let  us  begin  with  the  educated 
and  propertied  classes  and  exact  a  couple  of  years' 

171 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

service  in  a  destroyer  or  a  waterplane,  or  an  airship, 
or  a  research  laboratory,  or  a  training-camp,  from 
the  sons  of  everybody  who,  let  us  say,  pays  income 
tax  without  deductions.  Let  us  mix  with  these  a 
big  proportion — a  proportion  we  may  increase 
steadily — of  keen  scholarship  men  from  the  elemen- 
tary schools.  Such  a  braced-up  class  as  we  should 
create  in  this  way  would  give  us  the  realities  of  mili- 
tary power,  which  are  enterprise,  knowledge,  and 
invention ;  and  at  the  same  time  it  would  add  to  and 
not  subtract  from  the  economic  wealth  of  the  com- 
munity. Make  men;  that  is  the  only  sane,  perma- 
nent preparation  for  war.  So  we  should  develop  a 
strength  and  create  a  tradition  that  would  not  rust 
nor  grow  old-fashioned  in  all  the  years  to  come. 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

CIRCUMSTANCES  have  made  me  think  a  good  deal 
at  different  times  about  the  business  of  writing 
novels,  and  what  it  means,  and  is,  and  may  be;  and 
I  was  a  professional  critic  of  novels  long  before  I 
wrote  them.  I  have  been  writing  novels,  or  writing 
about  novels,  for  the  last  twenty  years.  It  seems 
only  yesterday  that  I  wrote  a  review — the  first  long 
and  appreciative  review  he  had — of  Mr.  Joseph 
Conrad's  Almayer's  Folly  in  the  Saturday  Review. 
When  a  man  has  focussed  so  much  of  his  life  upon  the 
novel,  it  is  not  reasonable  to  expect  him  to  take  too 
modest  or  apologetic  a  view  of  it.  I  consider  the 
novel  an  important  and  necessary  thing  indeed  in 
that  complicated  system  of  uneasy  adjustments  and 
readjustments  which  is  modern  civilisation.  I  make 
very  high  and  wide  claims  for  it.  In  many  directions 
I  do  not  think  we  can  get  along  without  it. 

Now  this,  I  know,  is  not  the  usually  received 
opinion.  There  is,  I  am  aware,  the  theory  that  the 
novel  is  wholly  and  solely  a  means  of  relaxation.  In 
spite  of  manifest  facts,  that  was  the  dominant  view 
of  the  great  period  that  we  now  in  our  retrospective 
way  speak  of  as  the  Victorian,  and  it  still  survives  to 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

this  day.  It  is  the  man's  theory  of  the  novel  rather 
than  the  woman's.  One  may  call  it  the  Weary- 
Giant  theory.  The  reader  is  represented  as  a  man, 
burthened,  toiling,  worn.  He  has  been  in  his  office 
from  ten  to  four,  with  perhaps  only  two  hours' 
interval  at  his  club  for  lunch;  or  he  has  been  playing 
golf;  or  he  has  been  waiting  about  and  voting  in  the 
House;  or  he  has  been  fishing;  or  he  has  been  dis- 
puting a  point  of  law;  or  writing  a  sermon;  or  doing 
one  of  a  thousand  other  of  the  grave  important 
things  which  constitute  the  substance  of  a  prosperous 
man's  life.  Now  at  last  comes  the  little  precious 
interval  of  leisure,  and  the  Weary  Giant  takes  up  a 
book.  Perhaps  he  is  vexed :  he  may  have  been  bunk- 
ered, his  line  may  have  been  entangled  in  the  trees, 
his  favourite  investment  may  have  slumped,  or  the 
judge  have  had  indigestion  and  been  extremely  rude 
to  him.  He  wants  to  forget  the  troublesome  realities 
of  life.  He  wants  to  be  taken  out  of  himself,  to  be 
cheered,  consoled,  amused — above  all,  amused.  He 
doesn't  want  ideas,  he  doesn't  want  facts;  above  all, 
he  doesn't  want — Problems.  He  wants  to  dream  of 
the  bright,  thin,  gay  excitements  of  a  phantom  world 
— in  which  he  can  be  hero — of  horses  ridden  and  lace 
worn  and  princesses  rescued  and  won.  He  wants 
pictures  of  funny  slums,  and  entertaining  paupers, 
and  laughable  longshoremen,  and  kindly  impulses 
making  life  sweet.  He  wants  romance  without  its 
defiance,  and  humour  without  its  sting;  and  the  busi- 
ness of  the  novelist,  he  holds,  is  to  supply  this  cooling 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

refreshment.  That  is  the  Weary  Giant  theory  of  the 
novel.  It  ruled  British  criticism  up  to  the  period  of 
the  Boer  war — and  then  something  happened  to 
quite  a  lot  of  us,  and  it  has  never  completely  re- 
covered its  old  predominance.  Perhaps  it  will; 
perhaps  something  else  may  happen  to  prevent  its 
ever  doing  so. 

Both  fiction  and  criticism  to-day  are  in  revolt 
against  that  tired  giant,  the  prosperous  Englishman. 
I  cannot  think  of  a  single  writer  of  any  distinction 
to-day,  unless  it  is  Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs,  who  is  content 
merely  to  serve  the  purpose  of  those  slippered  hours. 
So  far  from  the  weary  reader  being  a  decently  tired 
giant,  we  realise  that  he  is  only  an  inexpressibly  lax, 
slovenly  and  undertrained  giant,  and  we  are  all  out 
with  one  accord  resolved  to  exercise  his  higher 
ganglia  in  every  possible  way.  And  so  I  will  say 
no  more  of  the  idea  that  the  novel  is  merely  a  harm- 
less opiate  for  the  vacant  hours  of  prosperous  men. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  never  has  been,  and  by  its 
nature  I  doubt  if  it  ever  can  be. 

I  do  not  think  that  women  have  ever  quite  suc- 
cumbed to  the  tired-giant  attitude  in  their  reading. 
Women  are  more  serious,  not  only  about  life,  but 
about  books.  No  type  or  kind  of  woman  is  capable 
of  that  lounging,  defensive  stupidity  which  is  the 
basis  of  the  tired-giant  attitude,  and  all  through  the 
early  nineties,  during  which  the  respectable  frivolity 
of  Great  Britain  left  its  most  enduring  marks  upon 
our  literature,  there  was  a  rebel  undertow  of  earnest 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  aggressive  writing  and  reading,  supported  chiefly 
by  women  and  supplied  very  largely  by  women, 
which  gave  the  lie  to  the  prevailing  trivial  estimate 
of  fiction.  Among  readers,  women  and  girls  and 
young  men  at  least  will  insist  upon  having  their 
novels  significant  and  real,  and  it  is  to  these  per- 
petually renewed  elements  in  the  public  that  the 
novelist  must  look  for  his  continuing  emancipation 
from  the  wearier  and  more  massive  influences  at 
work  in  contemporary  British  life. 

And  if  the  novel  is  to  be  recognised  as  something 
more  than  a  relaxation,  it  has  also,  I  think,  to  be 
kept  free  from  the  restrictions  imposed  upon  it  by 
the  fierce  pedantries  of  those  who  would  define  a 
general  form  for  it.  Every  art  nowadays  must  steer 
its  way  between  the  rocks  of  trivial  and  degrading 
standards  and  the  whirlpool  of  arbitrary  and  irra- 
tional criticism.  Whenever  criticism  of  any  art 
becomes  specialised  and  professional,  whenever  a 
class  of  adjudicators  is  brought  into  existence,  those 
adjudicators  are  apt  to  become  as  a  class  distrustful 
of  their  immediate  impressions,  and,  anxious  for 
methods  of  comparison  between  work  and  work,  they 
begin  to  emulate  the  classifications  and  exact  meas- 
urements of  a  science,  and  to  set  up  ideals  and  rules 
as  data  for  such  classification  and  measurements. 
They  develop  an  alleged  sense  of  technique,  which 
is  too  often  no  more  than  the  attempt  to  exact  a 
laboriousness  of  method,  or  to  insist  upon  peculiari- 
ties of  method  which  impress  the  professional  critic 

176 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

not  so  much  as  being  merits  as  being  meritorious. 
This  sort  of  thing  has  gone  very  far  with  the  critical 
discussion  both  of  the  novel  and  the  play.  You  have 
all  heard  that  impressive  dictum  that  some  particular 
theatrical  display,  although  moving,  interesting,  and 
continually  entertaining  from  start  to  finish,  was  for 
occult  technical  reasons  "not  a  play,"  and  in  the 
same  way  you  are  continually  having  your  apprecia- 
tion of  fiction  dashed  by  the  mysterious  parallel 
condemnation,  that  the  story  you  like  "isn't  a  novel." 
The  novel  has  been  treated  as  though  its  form  was 
as  well  defined  as  the  sonnet.  Some  year  or  so  ago, 
for  example,  there  was  a  quite  serious  discussion, 
which  began,  I  believe,  in  a  weekly  paper  devoted 
to  the  interests  of  various  nonconformist  religious 
organisations,  about  the  proper  length  for  a  novel. 
The  critic  was  to  begin  his  painful  duties  with  a  yard 
measure.  The  matter  was  taken  up  with  profound 
gravity  by  the  Westminster  Gazette,  and  a  consider- 
able number  of  literary  men  and  women  were  cir- 
cularised and  asked  to  state,  in  the  face  of  Tom 
Jones,  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  The  Shabby-Genteel 
Story,  and  Bleak  House,  just  exactly  how  long 
the  novel  ought  to  be.  Our  replies  varied  accord- 
ing to  the  civility  of  our  natures,  but  the  mere 
attempt  to  raise  the  question  shows,  I  think, 
how  widespread  among  the  editorial,  paragraph- 
writing,  opinion-making  sort  of  people  is  this  notion 
of  prescribing  a  definite  length  and  a  definite  form 
for  the  novel.  In  the  newspaper  correspondence 

177 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

that  followed,  our  friend  the  weary  giant  made  a 
transitory  appearance  again.  We  were  told  the 
novel  ought  to  be  long  enough  for  him  to  take  up 
after  dinner  and  finish  before  his  whisky  at  eleven. 
That  was  obviously  a  half-forgotten  echo  of 
Edgar  Allan  Poe's  discussion  of  the  short  story. 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  very  definite  upon  the  point 
that  the  short  story  should  be  finished  at  a  sitting. 
But  the  novel  and  short  story  are  two  entirely  differ- 
ent things,  and  the  train  of  reasoning  that  made  the 
American  master  limit  the  short  story  to  about  an 
hour  of  reading  as  a  maximum  does  not  apply  to 
the  longer  work.  A  short  story  is,  or  should  be,  a 
simple  thing;  it  aims  at  producing  one  single,  vivid 
effect;  it  has  to  seize  the  attention  at  the  outset,  and 
never  relaxing,  gather  it  together  more  and  more 
until  the  climax  is  reached.  The  limits  of  the  human 
capacity  to  attend  closely  therefore  set  a  limit  to  it; 
it  must  explode  and  finish  before  interruption  occurs 
or  fatigue  sets  in.  But  the  novel  I  hold  to  be  a 
discursive  thing;  it  is  not  a  single  interest,  but  a 
woven  tapestry  of  interests ;  one  is  drawn  on  first  by 
this  affection  and  curiosity,  and  then  by  that;  it  is 
something  to  return  to,  and  I  do  not  see  that  we  can 
possibly  set  any  limit  to  its  extent.  The  distinctive 
value  of  the  novel  among  written  works  of  art  is  in 
characterisation,  and  the  charm  of  a  well-conceived 
character  lies,  not  in  knowing  its  destiny,  but  in 
watching  its  proceedings.  For  my  own  part,  I  will 
confess  that  I  find  all  the  novels  of  Dickens,  long  as 

178 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

they  are,  too  short  for  me.  I  am  sorry  they  do  not 
flow  into  one  another  more  than  they  do.  I  wish 
Micawber  and  Dick  Swiveller  and  Sairey  Gamp 
turned  up  again  in  other  novels  than  their  own,  just 
as  Shakespeare  ran  the  glorious  glow  of  Falstaff 
through  a  group  of  plays.  But  Dickens  tried  this 
once  when  he  carried  on  the  Pickwick  Club  into 
Master  Humphrey's  Clock.  That  experiment  was 
unsatisfactory,  and  he  did  not  attempt  anything  of 
the  sort  again.  Following  on  the  days  of  Dickens, 
the  novel  began  to  contract,  to  subordinate  char- 
acterisation to  story  and  description  to  drama;  con- 
siderations of  a  sordid  nature,  I  am  told,  had  to  do 
with  that;  something  about  a  guinea  and  a  half  and 
six  shillings  with  which  we  will  not  concern  ourselves 
— but  I  rejoice  to  see  many  signs  to-day  that  that 
phase  of  narrowing  and  restriction  is  over,  and  that 
there  is  every  encouragement  for  a  return  towards 
a  laxer,  more  spacious  form  of  novel-writing.  The 
movement  is  partly  of  English  origin,  a  revolt 
against  those  more  exacting  and  cramping  concep- 
tions of  artistic  perfection  to  which  I  will  recur  in  a 
moment,  and  a  return  to  the  lax  freedom  of  form,  the 
rambling  discursiveness,  the  right  to  roam,  of  the 
earlier  English  novel,  of  Tristram  Shandy  and  of 
Tom  Jones;  and  partly  it  comes  from  abroad,  and 
derives  a  stimulus  from  such  bold  and  original  enter- 
prises as  that  of  Monsieur  Rolland  in  his  Jean 
Christophe.  Its  double  origin  involves  a  double 
nature;  for  while  the  English  spirit  is  towards  dis- 

179 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

cursiveness  and  variety,  the  new  French  movement 
is  rather  towards  exhaustiveness.  Mr.  Arnold  Ben- 
nett has  experimented  in  both  forms  of  amplitude. 
His  superb  Old  Wives'  Tale,  wandering  from  per- 
son to  person  and  from  scene  to  scene,  is  by  far 
the  finest  "long  novel"  that  has  been  written  in 
English  in  the  English  fashion  in  this  generation,  and 
now  in  Clayhanger  and  its  promised  collaterals,  he 
undertakes  that  complete,  minute,  abundant  pres- 
entation of  the  growth  and  modification  of  one  or 
two  individual  minds,  which  is  the  essential  char- 
acteristic of  the  Continental  movement  towards  the 
novel  of  amplitude.  While  the  Old  Wives'  Tale  is 
discursive,  Clayhanger  is  exhaustive ;  he  gives  us  both 
types  of  the  new  movement  in  perfection. 

I  name  Jean  Christophe  as  a  sort  of  archetype 
in  this  connection,  because  it  is  just  at  present  very 
much  in  our  thoughts  by  reason  of  the  admirable 
translation  Mr.  Cannan  is  giving  us;  but  there  is  a 
greater  predecessor  to  this  comprehensive  and  spec- 
tacular treatment  of  a  single  mind  and  its  impres- 
sions and  ideas,  or  of  one  or  two  associated  minds, 
that  comes  to  us  now  via  Mr.  Bennett  and  Mr. 
Cannan  from  France.  The  great  original  of  all  this 
work  is  that  colossal  last  unfinished  book  of  Flau- 
bert, Bouvard  et  Pecuchet.  Flaubert,  the  bulk  of 
whose  life  was  spent  upon  the  most  austere  and 
restrained  fiction — Turgenev  was  not  more  austere 
and  restrained — broke  out  at  last  into  this  gay,  sad 
miracle  of  intellectual  abundance.  It  is  not  ex- 

180 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

tensively  read  in  this  country ;  it  is  not  yet,  I  believe, 
translated  into  English;  but  there  it  is — and  if  it 
is  new  to  the  reader  I  make  him  this  present  of  the 
secret  of  a  book  that  is  a  precious  wilderness  of  won- 
derful reading.  But  if  Flaubert  is  really  the  Conti- 
nental emancipator  of  the  novel  from  the  restrictions 
of  form,  the  master  to  whom  we  of  the  English 
persuasion,  we  of  the  discursive  school,  must  for  ever 
recur  is  he,  whom  I  will  maintain  against  all  comers 
to  be  the  subtlest  and  greatest  artist — I  lay  stress 
upon  that  word  artist — that  Great  Britain  has  ever 
produced  in  all  that  is  essentially  the  novel,  Laurence 
Sterne.  .  . 

The  confusion  between  the  standards  of  a  short 
story  and  the  standards  of  the  novel  which  leads  at 
last  to  these — what  shall  I  call  them? — Westminster 
Gazettisms? — about  the  correct  length  to  which  the 
novelist  should  aspire,  leads  also  to  all  kinds  of 
absurd  condemnations  and  exactions  upon  matters 
of  method  and  style.  The  underlying  fallacy  is 
always  this:  the  assumption  that  the  novel,  like  the 
story,  aims  at  a  single,  concentrated  impression. 
From  that  comes  a  fertile  growth  of  error.  Con- 
stantly one  finds  in  the  reviews  of  works  of  fiction 
the  complaint  that  this,  that  or  the  other  thing  in 
a  novel  is  irrelevant.  Now  it  is  the  easiest  thing, 
and  most  fatal  thing,  to  become  irrelevant  in  a  short 
story.  A  short  story  should  go  to  its  point  as  a 
man  flies  from  a  pursuing  tiger:  he  pauses  not  for 
the  daisies  in  his  path,  or  to  note  the  pretty  moss  on 
13  181 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  tree  he  climbs  for  safety.  But  the  novel  by  com- 
parison is  like  breakfasting  in  the  open  air  on  a 
summer  morning;  nothing  is  irrelevant  if  the  writer's 
mood  is  happy,  and  the  tapping  of  the  thrush  upon 
the  garden  path,  or  the  petal  of  apple-blossom  that 
floats  down  into  my  coffee,  is  as  relevant  as  the  egg 
I  open  or  the  bread  and  butter  I  bite.  And  all  sorts 
of  things  that  inevitably  mar  the  tense  illusion 
which  is  the  aim  of  the  short  story — the  introduction, 
for  example,  of  the  author's  personality — -any  com- 
ment that  seems  to  admit  that,  after  all,  fiction  is 
fiction,  a  change  in  manner  between  part  and  part, 
burlesque,  parody,  invective,  all  such  things  are  not 
necessarily  wrong  in  the  novel.  Of  course,  all  these 
things  may  fail  in  their  effect;  they  may  jar,  hinder, 
irritate,  and  all  are  difficult  to  do  well;  but  it  is  no 
artistic  merit  to  evade  a  difficulty  any  more  than  it 
is  a  merit  in  a  hunter  to  refuse  even  the  highest  of 
fences.  Nearly  all  the  novels  that  have,  by  the  lapse 
of  time,  reached  an  assured  position  of  recognised 
greatness,  are  not  only  saturated  in  the  personality 
of  the  author,  but  have  in  addition  quite  unaffected 
personal  outbreaks.  The  least  successful  instance, 
the  one  that  is  made  the  text  against  all  such  first- 
personal  interventions,  is,  of  course,  Thackeray. 
But  I  think  the  trouble  with  Thackeray  is  not  that 
he  makes  first-personal  interventions,  but  that  he 
does  so  with  a  curious  touch  of  dishonesty.  I  agree 
with  the  late  Mrs.  Craigie  that  there  was  something 
profoundly  vulgar  about  Thackeray.  It  was  a  sham 

i8a 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

thoughtful,  sham  man-of-the-world  pose  he  assumed; 
it  is  an  aggressive,  conscious,  challenging  person 
astride  before  a  fire,  and  a  little  distended  by  dinner 
and  a  sense  of  social  and  literary  precedences,  who 
uses  the  first  person  in  Thackeray's  novels.  It  isn't 
the  real  Thackeray;  it  isn't  a  frank  man  who  looks 
you  in  the  eyes  and  bares  his  soul  and  demands 
your  sympathy.  That  is  a  criticism  of  Thackeray, 
but  it  isn't  a  condemnation  of  intervention. 

I  admit  that  for  a  novelist  to  come  in  person  in 
this  way  before  his  readers  involves  grave  risks;  but 
when  it  is  done  without  affectations,  starkly  as  a  man 
comes  in  out  of  the  darkness  to  tell  of  perplexing 
things  without — as,  for  instance,  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad 
does  for  all  practical  purposes  in  his  Lord  Jim — : 
then  it  gives  a  sort  of  depth,  a  sort  of  subjective 
reality,  that  no  such  cold,  almost  affectedly  ironical 
detachment  as  that  which  distinguishes  the  work  of 
Mr.  John  Galsworthy,  for  example,  can  ever  attain. 
And  in  some  cases  the  whole  art  and  delight  of  a 
novel  may  lie  in  the  author's  personal  interventions ; 
let  such  novels  as  Elizabeth  and  her  German  Garden, 
and  the  same  writer's  Elizabeth  in  Rugen,  bear 
witness. 

Now,  all  this  time  I  have  been  hacking  away  at 
certain  hampering  and  limiting  beliefs  about  the 
novel,  letting  it  loose,  as  it  were,  in  form  and  pur- 
pose; I  have  still  to  say  just  what  I  think  the  novel 
is,  and  where,  if  anywhere,  its  boundary  line  ought 
to  be  drawn.  It  is  by  no  means  an  easy  task  to 

183 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

define  the  novel.  It  is  not  a  thing  premeditated. 
It  is  a  thing  that  has  grown  up  into  modern  life,  and 
taken  upon  itself  uses  and  produced  results  that 
could  not  have  been  foreseen  by  its  orginators.  Few 
of  the  important  things  in  the  collective  life  of  man 
started  out  to  be  what  they  are.  Consider,  for  ex- 
ample, all  the  unexpected  aesthetic  values,  the  in- 
spiration and  variety  of  emotional  result  which 
arises  out  of  the  cross-shaped  plan  of  the  Gothic 
cathedral,  and  the  undesigned  delight  and  wonder  of 
white  marble  that  has  ensued,  as  I  have  been  told, 
through  the  ageing  and  whitening  of  the  realistically 
coloured  statuary  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  Much 
of  the  charm  of  the  old  furniture  and  needlework, 
again,  upon  which  the  present  time  sets  so  much 
store,  lies  in  acquired  and  unpremeditated  qualities. 
And  no  doubt  the  novel  grew  up  out  of  simple  story- 
telling, and  the  universal  desire  of  children,  old  and 
young  alike,  for  a  story.  It  is  only  slowly  that  we 
have  developed  the  distinction  of  the  novel  from  the 
romance,  as  being  a  story  of  human  beings,  abso- 
lutely credible  and  conceivable,  as  distinguished 
from  human  beings  frankly  endowed  with  the 
glamour,  the  wonder,  the  brightness,  of  a  less  exact- 
ing and  more  vividly  eventful  world.  The  novel  is 
a  story  that  demands,  or  professes  to  demand,  no 
make-believe.  The  novelist  undertakes  to  present 
you  people  and  things  as  real  as  any  that  you  can 
meet  in  an  omnibus.  And  I  suppose  it  is  conceivable 
that  a  novel  might  exist  which  was  just  purely  a 

184 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

story  of  that  kind  and  nothing  more.  It  might 
amuse  you  as  one  is  amused  by  looking  out  of  a 
window  into  a  street,  or  listening  to  a  piece  of  agree- 
able music,  and  that  might  be  the  limit  of  its  effect. 
But  almost  always  the  novel  is  something  more  than 
that,  and  produces  more  effect  than  that.  The 
novel  has  inseparable  moral  consequences.  It  leaves 
impressions,  not  simply  of  things  seen,  but  of  acts 
judged  and  made  attractive  or  unattractive.  They 
may  prove  very  slight  moral  consequences,  and  very 
shallow  moral  impressions  in  the  long  run,  but  there 
they  are,  none  the  less,  its  inevitable  accompani- 
ments. It  is  unavoidable  that  this  should  be  so. 
Even  if  the  novelist  attempts  or  affects  to  be  im- 
partial, he  still  cannot  prevent  his  characters  setting 
examples;  he  still  cannot  avoid,  as  people  say, 
putting  ideas  into  his  readers'  heads.  The  greater 
his  skill,  the  more  convincing  his  treatment,  the  more 
vivid  his  power  of  suggestion.  And  it  is  equally 
impossible  for  him  not  to  betray  his  sense  that  the 
proceedings  of  this  person  are  rather  jolly  and  ad- 
mirable, and  of  that,  rather  ugly  and  detestable.  I 
suppose  Mr.  Bennett,  for  example,  would  say  that 
he  should  not  do  so;  but  it  is  as  manifest  to  any 
disinterested  observer  that  he  greatly  loves  and 
admires  his  Card,  as  that  Richardson  admired  his 
Sir  Charles  Grandison,  or  that  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward 
considers  her  Marcella  a  very  fine  and  estimable 
young  woman.  And  I  think  it  is  just  in  this,  that 
the  novel  is  not  simply  a  fictitious  record  of  conduct, 

185 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

but  also  a  study  and  judgment  of  conduct,  and 
through  that  of  the  ideas  that  lead  to  conduct,  that 
the  real  and  increasing  value — or  perhaps  to  avoid 
controversy  I  had  better  say  the  real  and  increasing 
importance — of  the  novel  and  of  the  novelist  in 
modern  life  comes  in. 

It  is  no  new  discovery  that  the  novel,  like  the 
drama,  is  a  powerful  instrument  of  moral  suggestion. 
This  has  been  understood  in  England  ever  since  there 
has  been  such  a  thing  as  a  novel  in  England.  This 
has  been  recognised  equally  by  novelists,  novel- 
readers,  and  the  people  who  wouldn't  read  novels 
under  any  condition  whatever.  Richardson  wrote 
deliberately  for  edification,  and  Tom  Jones  is  a  pow- 
erful and  effective  appeal  for  a  charitable,  and  even 
indulgent,  attitude  towards  loose-living  men.  But 
excepting  Fielding  and  one  or  two  other  of  those 
partial  exceptions  that  always  occur  in  the  case  of 
critical  generalisations,  there  is  a  definable  difference 
between  the  novel  of  the  past  and  what  I  may  call 
the  modern  novel.  It  is  a  difference  that  is  reflected 
upon  the  novel  from  a  difference  in  the  general  way 
of  thinking.  It  lies  in  the  fact  that  formerly  there 
was  a  feeling  of  certitude  about  moral  values  and 
standards  of  conduct  that  is  altogether  absent  to-day. 
It  wasn't  so  much  that  men  were  agreed  upon  these 
things — about  these  things  there  have  always  been 
enormous  divergences  of  opinion — as  that  men  were 
emphatic,  cocksure,  and  unteachable  about  whatever 
they  did  happen  to  believe  to  a  degree  that  no  longer 

186 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

obtains.  This  is  the  Balfourian  age,  and  even 
religion  seeks  to  establish  itself  on  doubt.  There 
were,  perhaps,  just  as  many  differences  in  the  past 
as  there  are  now,  but  the  outlines  were  harder — they 
were,  indeed,  so  hard  as  to  be  almost,  to  our  sense, 
savage.  You  might  be  a  Roman  Catholic,  and  in 
that  case  you  did  not  want  to  hear  about  Protestants, 
Turks,  Infidels,  except  in  tones  of  horror  and  hatred. 
You  knew  exactly  what  was  good  and  what  was  evil. 
Your  priest  informed  you  upon  these  points,  and  all 
you  needed  in  any  novel  you  read  was  a  confirmation, 
implicit  or  explicit,  of  these  vivid,  rather  than  charm- 
ing, prejudices.  If  you  were  a  Protestant  you  were 
equally  clear  and  unshakable.  Your  sect,  which- 
ever sect  you  belonged  to,  knew  the  whole  of  truth 
and  included  all  the  nice  people.  It  had  nothing  to 
learn  in  the  world,  and  it  wanted  to  learn  nothing 
outside  its  sectarian  convictions.  The  unbelievers, 
you  know,  were  just  as  bad,  and  said  their  creeds 
with  an  equal  fury — merely  interpolating  nots. 
People  of  every  sort — Catholic,  Protestant,  Infidel, 
or  what  not — were  equally  clear  that  good  was  good 
and  bad  was  bad,  that  the  world  was  made  up  of 
good  characters  whom  you  had  to  love,  help  and 
admire,  and  of  bad  characters  to  whom  one  might, 
in  the  interests  of  goodness,  even  lie,  and  whom  one 
had  to  foil,  defeat  and  triumph  over  shamelessly  at 
every  opportunity.  That  was  the  quality  of  the 
times.  The  novel  reflected  this  quality  of  assurance, 
and  its  utmost  charity  was  to  unmask  an  apparent 

187 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

villain  and  show  that  he  or  she  was  really  profoundly 
and  correctly  good,  or  to  unmask  an  apparent  saint 
and  show  the  hypocrite.  There  was  no  such  pene- 
trating and  pervading  element  of  doubt  and  curi- 
osity—  and  charity,  about  the  rightfulness  and 
beauty  of  conduct,  such  as  one  meets  on  every  hand 
to-day. 

The  novel-reader  of  the  past,  therefore,  like  the 
novel-reader  of  the  more  provincial  parts  of  England 
to-day,  judged  a  novel  by  the  convictions  that  had 
been  built  up  in  him  by  his  training  and  his  priest 
or  his  pastor.  If  it  agreed  with  these  convictions  he 
approved;  if  it  did  not  agree  he  disapproved — often 
with  great  energy.  The  novel,  where  it  was  not  un- 
conditionally banned  altogether  as  a  thing  disturbing 
and  unnecessary,  was  regarded  as  a  thing  subordi- 
nated to  the  teaching  of  the  priest  or  pastor,  or  what- 
ever director  and  dogma  was  followed.  Its  modest 
moral  confirmations  began  when  authority  had  com- 
pleted its  direction.  The  novel  was  good — if  it 
seemed  to  harmonise  with  the  graver  exercises  con- 
ducted by  Mr.  Chadband — and  it  was  bad  and 
outcast  if  Mr.  Chadband  said  so.  And  it  is  over  the 
bodies  of  discredited  and  disgruntled  Chadbands  that 
the  novel  escapes  from  its  servitude  and  inferiority. 

Now  the  conflict  of  authority  against  criticism  is 
one  of  the  eternal  conflicts  of  humanity.  It  is  the 
conflict  of  organisation  against  initiative,  of  disci- 
pline against  freedom.  It  was  the  conflict  of  the 
priest  against  the  prophet  in  ancient  Judaea,  of  the 

188 


THE   CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

Pharisee  against  the  Nazarene,  of  the  Realist  against 
the  Nominalist,  of  the  Church  against  the  Franciscan 
and  the  Lollard,  of  the  Respectable  Person  against 
the  Artist,  of  the  hedge-clippers  of  mankind  against 
the  shooting  buds.  And  to-day,  while  we  live  in  a 
period  of  tightening  and  extending  social  organisa- 
tion, we  live  also  in  a  period  of  adventurous  and  in- 
surgent thought,  in  an  intellectual  spring  unprece- 
dented in  the  world's  history.  There  is  an  enormous 
criticism  going  on  of  the  faiths  upon  which  men's 
lives  and  associations  are  based,  and  of  every  stand- 
ard and  rule  of  conduct.  And  it  is  inevitable  that 
the  novel,  just  in  the  measure  of  its  sincerity  and 
ability,  should  reflect  and  co-operate  in  the  atmos- 
phere and  uncertainties  and  changing  variety  of  this 
seething  and  creative  time. 

And  I  do  not  mean  merely  that  the  novel  is  un- 
avoidably charged  with  the  representation  of  this 
wide  and  wonderful  conflict.  It  is  a  necessary  part 
of  the  conflict.  The  essential  characteristic  of  this 
great  intellectual  revolution  amidst  which  we  are 
living  to-day,  that  revolution  of  which  the  revival 
and  restatement  of  nominalism  under  the  name  of 
pragmatism  is  the  philosophical  aspect,  consists  in 
the  reassertion  of  the  importance  of  the  individual 
instance  as  against  the  generalisation.  All  our  so- 
cial, political,  moral  problems  are  being  approached 
in  a  new  spirit,  in  an  inquiring  and  experimental 
spirit,  which  has  small  respect  for  abstract  princi- 
ples and  deductive  rules.  We  perceive  more  and 

189 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

more  clearly,  for  example,  that  the  study  of  social 
organisation  is  an  empty  and  unprofitable  study  until 
we  approach  it  as  a  study  of  the  association  and 
inter -reaction  of  individualised  human  beings  in- 
spired by  diversified  motives,  ruled  by  traditions,  and 
swayed  by  the  suggestions  of  a  complex  intellectual 
atmosphere.  And  all  our  conceptions  of  the  rela- 
tionships between  man  and  man,  and  of  justice  and 
rightfulness  and  social  desirableness,  remain  some- 
thing misfitting  and  inappropriate,  something  un- 
comfortable and  potentially  injurious,  as  if  we  were 
trying  to  wear  sharp-edged  clothes  made  for  a  giant 
out  of  tin,  until  we  bring  them  to  the  test  and 
measure  of  realised  individualities. 

And  this  is  where  the  value  and  opportunity  of  the 
modern  novel  comes  in.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  it  is  the 
only  medium  through  which  we  can  discuss  the  great 
majority  of  the  problems  which  are  being  raised  in 
such  bristling  multitude  by  our  contemporary  social 
development.  Nearly  every  one  of  those  problems 
has  at  its  core  a  psychological  problem,  and  not 
merely  a  psychological  problem,  but  one  in  which  the 
idea  of  individuality  is  an  essential  factor.  Dealing 
with  most  of  these  questions  by  a  rule  or  a  generalisa- 
tion is  like  putting  a  cordon  round  a  jungle  full  of 
the  most  diversified  sort  of  game.  The  hunting  only 
begins  when  you  leave  the  cordon  behind  you  and 
push  into  the  thickets. 

Take,  for  example,  the  immense  cluster  of  diffi- 
culties that  arises  out  of  the  increasing  complexity 

190 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

of  our  state.  On  every  hand  we  are  creating  officials, 
and  compared  with  only  a  few  years  ago  the  private 
life  in  a  dozen  fresh  directions  comes  into  contact 
with  officialdom.  But  we  still  do  practically  nothing 
to  work  out  the  interesting  changes  that  occur  in  this 
sort  of  man  and  that,  when  you  withdraw  him  as  it 
were  from  the  common  crowd  of  humanity,  put  his 
mind  if  not  his  body  into  uniform  and  endow  him 
with  powers  and  functions  and  rules.  It  is  mani- 
festly a  study  of  the  profoundest  public  and  personal 
importance.  The  process  of  social  and  political 
organisation  that  has  been  going  on  for  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  is  pretty  clearly  going  on  now 
if  anything  with  increasing  vigour — and  for  the  most 
part  the  entire  dependence  of  the  consequences  of 
the  whole  problem  upon  the  reaction  between  the 
office  on  the  one  hand  and  the  weak,  uncertain, 
various  human  beings  who  take  office  on  the  other, 
doesn't  seem  even  to  be  suspected  by  the  energetic, 
virtuous  and  more  or  less  amiable  people  whose 
activities  in  politics  and  upon  the  back  stairs  of 
politics  bring  about  these  developments.  They 
assume  that  the  sort  of  official  they  need,  a  combina- 
tion of  godlike  virtue  and  intelligence  with  unfailing 
mechanical  obedience,  can  be  made  out  of  just  any 
young  nephew.  And  I  know  of  no  means  of  per- 
suading people  that  this  is  a  rather  unjustifiable 
assumption,  and  of  creating  an  intelligent  con- 
trolling criticism  of  officials  and  of  assisting  con- 
scientious officials  to  an  effective  self-examination, 

191 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  generally  of  keeping  the  atmosphere  of  official 
life  sweet  and  healthy,  except  the  novel.  Yet  so  far 
the  novel  has  scarcely  begun  its  attack  upon  this 
particular  field  of  human  life,  and  all  the  attractive 
varied  play  of  motive  it  contains. 

Of  course  we  have  one  supreme  and  devastating 
study  of  the  illiterate  minor  official  in  Bumble. 
That  one  figure  lit  up  and  still  lights  the  whole  prob- 
lem of  Poor  Law  administration  for  the  English  read- 
ing community.  It  was  a  translation  of  well-meant 
regulations  and  pseudo-scientific  conceptions  of  social 
order  into  blundering,  arrogant,  ill-bred  flesh  and 
blood.  It  was  worth  a  hundred  Royal  Commissions. 
You  may  make  your  regulations  as  you  please,  said 
Dickens  in  effect ;  this  is  one  sample  of  the  stuff  that 
will  carry  them  out.  But  Bumble  stands  almost 
alone.  Instead  of  realising  that  he  is  only  one 
aspect  of  officialdom,  we  are  all  too  apt  to  make  him 
the  type  of  all  officials,  and  not  an  urban  district 
council  can  get  into  a  dispute  about  its  electric  light 
without  being  denounced  as  a  Bumbledom  by  some 
whirling  enemy  or  other.  The  burthen  upon  Bum- 
ble's shoulders  is  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  and  we  want 
the  contemporary  novel  to  give  us  a  score  of  other 
figures  to  put  beside  him,  other  aspects  and  reflec- 
tions upon  this  great  problem  of  officialism  made 
flesh.  Bumble  is  a  magnificent  figure  of  the  follies 
and  cruelties  of  ignorance  in  office — I  would  have 
every  candidate  for  the  post  of  workhouse  mas- 
ter pass  a  severe  examination  upon  Oliver  Twist— 

192 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

but  it  is  not  only  caricature  and  satire  I  demand. 
We  must  have  not  only  the  fullest  treatment  of  the 
temptations,  vanities,  abuses,  and  absurdities  of 
office,  but  all  its  dreams,  its  sense  of  constructive 
order,  its  consolations,  its  sense  of  service,  and  its 
nobler  satisfactions.  You  may  say  that  is  demanding 
more  insight  and  power  in  our  novels  and  novelists 
than  we  can  possibly  hope  to  find  in  them.  So  much 
the  worse  for  us.  I  stick  to  my  thesis  that  the  com- 
plicated social  organisation  of  to-day  cannot  get 
along  without  the  amount  of  mutual  understanding 
and  mutual  explanation  such  a  range  of  characterisa- 
tion in  our  novels  implies.  The  success  of  civilisa- 
tion amounts  ultimately  to  a  success  of  sympathy 
and  understanding.  If  people  cannot  be  brought 
to  an  interest  in  one  another  greater  than  they  feel 
to-day,  to  curiosities  and  criticisms  far  keener,  and 
co-operations  far  subtler,  than  we  have  now;  if  class 
cannot  be  brought  to  measure  itself  against,  and 
interchange  experience  and  sympathy  with  class,  and 
temperament  with  temperament,  then  we  shall  never 
struggle  very  far  beyond  the  confused  discomforts 
and  uneasiness  of  to-day,  and  the  changes  and  com- 
plications of  human  life  will  remain  as  they  are  now, 
very  like  the  crumplings  and  separations  and  com- 
plications of  an  immense  avalanche  that  is  sliding 
down  a  hill.  And  in  this  tremendous  work  of  human 
reconciliation  and  elucidation,  it  seems  to  me  it  is  the 
novel  that  must  attempt  most  and  achieve  most. 
You  may  feel  disposed  to  say  to  all  this :  We  grant 
193 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  major  premises,  but  why  look  to  the  work  of 
prose  fiction  as  the  main  instrument  in  this  necessary 
process  of,  so  to  speak,  sympathising  humanity 
together  ?  Cannot  this  be  done  far  more  effectively 
through  biography  and  autobiography,  for  example? 
Isn't  there  the  lyric;  and,  above  all,  isn't  there  the 
play?  Well,  so  far  as  the  stage  goes,  I  think  it  is  a 
very  charming  and  exciting  form  of  human  activity, 
a  display  of  actions  and  surprises  of  the  most  moving 
and  impressive  sort;  but  beyond  the  opportunity  it 
affords  for  saying  startling  and  thought-provoking 
things — opportunities  Mr.  Shaw,  for  example,  has 
worked  to  the  utmost  limit — I  do  not  see  that  the 
drama  does  much  to  enlarge  our  sympathies  and  add 
to  our  stock  of  motive  ideas.  And  regarded  as  a 
medium  for  startling  and  thought-provoking  things, 
the  stage  seems  to  me  an  extremely  clumsy  and 
costly  affair.  One  might  just  as  well  go  about  with 
a  pencil  writing  up  the  thought-provoking  phrase, 
whatever  it  is,  on  walls.  The  drama  excites  our 
sympathies  intensely,  but  it  seems  to  me  it  is  far  too 
objective  a  medium  to  widen  them  appreciably,  and 
it  is  that  widening,  that  increase  in  the  range  of 
understanding,  at  which  I  think  civilisation  is  aiming. 
The  case  for  biography,  and  more  particularly  auto- 
biography, as  against  the  novel,  is,  I  admit,  at  the 
first  blush  stronger.  You  may  say:  Why  give  us 
these  creatures  of  a  novelist's  imagination,  these 
phantom  and  fantastic  thinkings  and  doings,  when 
we  may  have  the  stories  of  real  lives,  really  lived — the 

194 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

intimate  record  of  actual  men  and  women?  To 
which  one  answers : ' '  Ah,  if  one  could ! "  But  it  is  just 
because  biography  does  deal  with  actual  lives,  actual 
facts,  because  it  radiates  out  to  touch  continuing 
interests  and  sensitive  survivors,  that  it  is  so  unsatis- 
factory, so  untruthful.  Its  inseparable  falsehood  is 
the  worst  of  all  kinds  of  falsehood — the  falsehood  of 
omission.  Think  what  an  abounding,  astonishing, 
perplexing  person  Gladstone  must  have  been  in 
life,  and  consider  Lord  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone, 
cold,  dignified — not  a  life  at  all,  indeed,  so  much  as 
embalmed  remains;  the  fire  gone,  the  passions  gone, 
the  bowels  carefully  removed.  All  biography  has 
something  of  that  post-mortem  coldness  and  respect, 
and  as  for  autobiography — a  man  may  show  his  soul 
in  a  thousand  half -unconscious  ways,  but  to  turn 
upon  oneself  and  explain  oneself  is  given  to  no  one. 
It  is  the  natural  liars  and  braggarts,  your  Cellinis 
and  Casanovas,  men  with  a  habit  of  regarding  them- 
selves with  a  kind  of  objective  admiration,  who  do 
best  in  autobiography.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
novel  has  neither  the  intense  self -consciousness  of 
autobiography  nor  the  paralysing  responsibilities  of 
the  biographer.  It  is  by  comparison  irresponsible 
and  free.  Because  its  characters  are  figments  and 
phantoms,  they  can  be  made  entirely  transparent. 
Because  they  are  fictions,  and  you  know  they  are 
fictions,  so  that  they  cannot  hold  you  for  an  instant 
so  soon  as  they  cease  to  be  true,  they  have  a  power 
of  veracity  quite  beyond  that  of  actual  records. 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Every  novel  carries  its  own  justification  and  its  own 
condemnation  in  its  success  or  failure  to  convince  you 
that  the  thing  was  so.  Now  history,  biography, 
blue  -  book,  and  so  forth,  can  hardly  ever  .  get 
beyond  the  statement  that  the  superficial  fact 
was  so. 

You  see  now  the  scope  of  the  claim  I  am  making 
for  the  novel;  it  is  to  be  the  social  mediator,  the 
vehicle  of  understanding,  the  instrument  of  self- 
examination,  the  parade  of  morals  and  the  exchange 
of  manners,  the  factory  of  customs,  the  criticism  of 
laws  and  institutions  and  of  social  dogmas  and  ideas. 
It  is  to  be  the  home  confessional,  the  initiator  of 
knowledge,  the  seed  of  fruitful  self-questioning.  Let 
me  be  very  clear  here.  I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment 
that  the  novelist  is  going  to  set  up  as  a  teacher,  as 
a  sort  of  priest  with  a  pen,  who  will  make  men  and 
women  believe  and  do  this  and  that.  The  novel  is 
not  a  new  sort  of  pulpit;  humanity  is  passing  out  of 
the  phase  when  men  sit  under  preachers  and  dogmatic 
influences.  But  the  novelist  is  going  to  be  the  most 
potent  of  artists,  because  he  is  going  to  present 
conduct,  devise  beautiful  conduct,  discuss  conduct, 
analyse  conduct,  suggest  conduct,  illuminate  it 
through  and  through.  He  will  not  teach,  but  dis- 
cuss, point  out,  plead,  and  display.  And  this  being 
my  view  you  will  be  prepared  for  the  demand  I  am 
now  about  to  make  for  an  absolutely  free  hand  for 
the  novelist  in  his  choice  of  topic  and  incident  and 
in  his  method  of  treatment ;  or,  rather,  if  I  may  pre- 
196 


THE  CONTEMPORARY  NOVEL 

sume  to  speak  for  other  novelists,  I  would  say  it  is 
not  so  much  a  demand  we  make  as  an  intention  we 
proclaim.  We  are  going  to  write,  subject  only  to 
our  limitations,  about  the  whole  of  human  life.  We 
are  going  to  deal  with  political  questions  and  religious 
questions  and  social  questions.  We  cannot  present 
people  unless  we  have  this  free  hand,  this  unrestricted 
field.  What  is  the  good  of  telling  stories  about 
people's  lives  if  one  may  not  deal  freely  with  the 
religious  beliefs  and  organisations  that  have  con- 
trolled or  failed  to  control  them  ?  What  is  the  good 
of  pretending  to  write  about  love,  and  the  loyalties 
and  treacheries  and  quarrels  of  men  and  women,  if 
one  must  not  glance  at  those  varieties  of  physical 
temperament  and  organic  quality,  those  deeply  pas- 
sionate needs  and  distresses  from  which  half  the 
storms  of  human  life  are  brewed  ?  We  mean  to  deal 
with  all  these  things,  and  it  will  need  very  much 
more  than  the  disapproval  of  provincial  librarians, 
the  hostility  of  a  few  influential  people  in  London, 
the  scurrility  of  one  paper,  and  the  deep  and  obsti- 
nate silences  of  another,  to  stop  the  incoming  tide 
of  aggressive  novel-writing.  We  are  going  to  write 
about  it  all.  We  are  going  to  write  about  business 
and  finance  and  politics  and  precedence  and  preten- 
tiousness and  decorum  and  indecorum,  until  a  thou- 
sand pretences  and  ten  thousand  impostures  shrivel 
in  the  cold,  clear  air  of  our  elucidations.  We  are 
going  to  write  of  wasted  opportunities  and  latent 
beauties  until  a  thousand  new  ways  of  living  open 

14  197 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

to  men  and  women.  We  are  going  to  appeal  to  the 
young  and  the  hopeful  and  the  curious,  against  the 
established,  the  dignified,  and  defensive.  Before  we 
have  done,  we  will  have  all  life  within  the  scope  of 
the  novel. 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

SUPPOSE  a  philosopher  had  a  great  deal  of  money 
to  spend — though  this  is  not  in  accordance  with 
experience,  it  is  not  inherently  impossible — and  sup- 
pose he  thought,  as  any  philosopher  does  think,  that 
the  British  public  ought  to  read  much  more  and 
better  books  than  they  do,  and  that  founding  public 
libraries  was  the  way  to  induce  them  to  do  so,  what 
sort  of  public  libraries  would  he  found?  That,  I 
submit,  is  a  suitable  topic  for  a  disinterested  spec- 
ulator. 

He  would,  I  suppose,  being  a  philosopher,  begin  by 
asking  himself  what  a  library  essentially  was,  and  he 
would  probably  come  to  the  eccentric  conclusion  that 
it  was  essentially  a  collection  of  books.  He  would, 
in  his  unworldliness,  entirely  overlook  the  fact  that 
it  might  be  a  job  for  a  municipally  influential  builder, 
a  costly  but  conspicuous  monument  to  opulent 
generosity,  a  news-room,  an  employment  bureau,  or 
a  meeting-place  for  the  glowing  young;  he  would 
never  think  for  a  moment  of  a  library  as  a  thing  one 
might  build,  it  would  present  itself  to  him  with 
astonishing  simplicity  as  a  thing  one  would  collect. 
Bricks  ceased  to  be  literature  after  Babylon. 

199 


tSOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

His  first  proceeding  would  be,  I  suppose,  to  make 
a  list  of  that  collection.  What  books,  he  would  say, 
have  all  my  libraries  to  possess  anyhow?  And  he 
would  begin  to  jot  down — with  the  assistance  of  a 
few  friends,  perhaps — this  essential  list. 

He  would,  being  a  philosopher,  insist  on  good 
editions,  and  he  would  also  take  great  pains  with  the 
selection.  It  would  not  be  a  limited  or  an  exclusive 
list — when  in  doubt  he  would  include.  He  would 
disregard  modern  fiction  very  largely,  because  any 
book  that  has  any  success  can  always  be  bought  for 
sixpence,  and  modern  poetry,  because,  with  an  excep- 
tion or  so,  it  does  not  signify  at  all.  He  would  set 
almost  all  the  Greek  and  Roman  literature  in  well- 
printed  translations  and  with  luminous  introductions 
— and  if  there  were  no  good  translations  he  would 
give  some  good  man  £500  or  so  to  make  one — trans- 
lations of  all  that  is  good  in  modern  European 
literatures,  and,  last  but  largest  portion  of  his  list, 
editions  of  all  that  is  worthy  of  our  own.  He  would 
make  a  very  careful  list  of  thoroughly  modern  en- 
cyclopaedias, atlases,  and  volumes  of  information, 
and  a  particularly  complete  catalogue  of  all  literature 
that  is  still  copyright;  and  then — with  perhaps  a 
secretary  or  so — he  would  revise  all  his  lists  and 
mark  against  every  book  whether  he  would  have 
two,  five  or  ten  or  twenty  copies,  or  whatever  number 
of  copies  of  it  he  thought  proper  in  each  library. 

Then  next,  being  a  philosopher,  he  would  decide 
that  if  he  was  going  to  buy  a  great  number  of 

2QQ 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

libraries  in  this  way,  he  was  going  to  make  an  abso- 
lutely new  sort  of  demand  for  these  books,  and  that 
he  was  entitled  to  a  special  sort  of  supply. 

He  would  not  expect  the  machinery  of  retail  book- 
selling to  meet  the  needs  of  wholesale  buying.  So  he 
would  go  either  to  wholesale  booksellers,  or  directly 
to  the  various  publishers  of  the  books  and  editions 
he  had  chosen,  and  ask  for  reasonable  special  prices 
for  the  two  thousand  or  seven  thousand  or  fifty 
thousand  of  each  book  he  required.  And  the  pub- 
lishers would,  of  course,  give  him  very  special  prices, 
more  especially  in  the  case  of  the  out-of-copyright 
books.  He  would  probably  find  it  best  to  buy  whole 
editions  in  sheets  and  bind  them  himself  in  strong 
bindings.  And  he  would  emerge  from  these  negotia- 
tions in  possession  of  a  number  of  complete  libraries 
of — how  many  books?  Less  than  twenty  thousand 
ought  to  do  it,  I  think,  though  that  is  a  matter  for 
separate  discussion,  and  that  should  cost  him,  buy- 
ing in  this  wholesale  way,  under  rather  than  over 
£2,000  a  library. 

And  next  he  would  bethink  himself  of  the  readers 
of  these  books.  "These  people,"  he  would  say, 
1 '  do  not  know  very  much  about  books,  which,  indeed, 
is  why  I  am  giving  them  this  library." 

Accordingly,  he  would  get  a  number  of  able  and 
learned  people  to  write  him  guides  to  his  twenty 
thousand  books,  and,  in  fact,  to  the  whole  world  of 
reading,  a  guide,  for  example,  to  the  books  on  history 
in  general,  a  special  guide  to  books  on  English 

201 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

history,  or  French  or  German  history,  a  guide  to  the 
books  on  geology,  a  guide  to  poetry  and  poetical 
criticisms,  and  so  forth. 

Some  such  books  our  philosopher  would  find 
already  done — the  Bibliography  of  American  His- 
tory, of  the  American  Libraries'  Association,  for 
example,  and  Mr.  Nield's  Guide  to  Historical  Fic- 
tion—  and  what  are  not  done  he  would  commis- 
sion good  men  to  do  for  him.  Suppose  he  had  to 
commission  forty  such  guides  altogether,  and  that 
they  cost  him  on  the  average  £500  each,  for  he  would 
take  care  not  to  sweat  their  makers,  then  that  would 
add  another  £20,000  to  his  expenditure.  But  if  he 
was  going  to  found  400  libraries,  let  us  say,  that 
would  only  be  £50  a  library — a  very  trivial  addition 
to  his  expenditure. 

The  rarer  books  mentioned  in  these  various  guides 
would  remind  him,  however,  of  the  many  even  his 
ample  limit  of  twenty  thousand  forced  him  to  ex- 
clude, and  he  would,  perhaps,  consider  the  need  of 
having  two  or  three  libraries  each  for  the  storage  of 
a  hundred  thousand  books  or  so  not  kept  at  the 
local  libraries,  but  which  could  be  sent  to  them  at  a 
day's  notice  at  the  request  of  any  reader.  And 
then,  and  only  then,  would  he  give  his  attention  to 
the  housing  and  staffing  that  this  reality  of  books 
would  demand. 

Being  a  philosopher  and  no  fool,  he  would  draw  a 
very  clear,  hard  distinction  between  the  reckless 
endowment  of  the  building  trade  and  the  dissemina- 

202 


THE  PHILOSOPHER'S  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

tion  of  books.  He  would  distinguish,  too,  between 
a  library  and  a  news-room,  and  would  find  no  great 
attraction  in  the  prospect  of  supplying  the  national 
youth  with  free  but  thumby  copies  of  the  sixpenny 
magazines.  He  would  consider  that  all  that  was 
needed  for  his  library  was,  first,  easily  accessible 
fireproof  shelving  for  his  collection,  with  ample  space 
for  his  additions,  an  efficient  distributing  office,  a 
cloak-room,  and  so  forth,  and  eight  or  nine  not  too 
large,  well-lit,  well-carpeted,  well-warmed  and  well- 
ventilated  rooms  radiating  from  that  office,  in  which 
the  guides  and  so  forth  could  be  consulted,  and  where 
those  who  had  no  convenient,  quiet  room  at  home 
could  read. 

He  would  find  that,  by  avoiding  architectural  vul- 
garities, a  simple,  well-proportioned  building  satisfy- 
ing all  these  requirements  and  containing  housing  for 
the  librarian,  assistant,  custodian  and  staff  could  be 
built  for  between  £4,000  and  £5,000,  excluding  the 
cost  of  site,  and  his  sites,  which  he  would  not  choose 
for  their  conspicuousness,  might  average  something 
under  another  £1,000. 

He  would  try  to  make  a  bargain  with  the  local 
people  for  their  co-operation  in  his  enterprise,  though 
he  would,  as  a  philosopher,  understand  that  where  a 
public  library  is  least  wanted  it  is  generally  most 
needed.  But  in  most  cases  he  would  succeed  in 
stipulating  for  a  certain  standard  of  maintenance  by 
the  local  authority.  Since  moderately  prosperous 
illiterate  men  undervalue  education,  and  most  town 

203 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

councillors  are  moderately  illiterate  men,  he  would 
do  his  best  to  keep  the  salary  and  appointment  of  the 
librarian  out  of  such  hands.  He  would  stipulate  for 
a  salary  of  at  least  £400,  in  addition  to  housing,  light 
and  heat,  and  he  would  probably  find  it  advisable 
to  appoint  a  little  committee  of  visitors  who  would 
have  the  power  to  examine  qualifications,  endorse  the 
appointment,  and  recommend  the  dismissal  of  all 
his  four  hundred  librarians.  He  would  probably  try 
to  make  the  assistantship  at  £100  a  year  or  there- 
about a  sort  of  local  scholarship  to  be  won  by  com- 
petition, and  only  the  cleaner  and  caretaker's  place 
would  be  left  to  the  local  politician.  And,  of  course, 
our  philosopher  would  stipulate  that,  apart  from  all 
other  expenditure,  a  sum  of  at  least  £200  a  year 
should  be  set  aside  for  buying  new  books. 

So  our  rich  philosopher  would  secure  at  the  mini- 
mum cost  a  number  of  efficiently  equipped  libraries 
throughout  the  country.  Eight  thousand  pounds 
down  and  £900  a  year  is  about  as  cheap  as  a  public 
library  can  be.  Below  that  level,  it  would  be  cheaper 
to  have  no  public  library.  Above  that  level,  a 
public  library  that  is  not  efficient  is  either  dis- 
honestly or  incapably  organised  or  managed,  or  it 
is  serving  too  large  a  district  and  needs  duplication, 
or  it  is  trying  to  do  too  much. 


ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 

IT  has  been  one  of  the  less  possible  dreams  of  my 
life  to  be  a  painted  Pagan  God  and  live  upon  a  ceiling. 
I  crown  myself  becomingly  in  stars  or  tendrils  or  with 
electric  coruscations  (as  the  mood  takes  me),  and 
wear  an  easy  costume  free  from  complications  and 
appropriate  to  the  climate  of  those  agreeable  spaces. 
The  company  about  me  on  the  clouds  varies  greatly 
with  the  mood  of  the  vision,  but  always  it  is  in  some 
way,  if  not  always  a  very  obvious  way,  beautiful. 
One  frequent  presence  is  G.  K.  Chesterton,  a  joyous 
whirl  of  brushwork,  appropriately  garmented  and 
crowned.  When  he  is  there,  I  remark,  the  whole 
ceiling  is  by  a  sort  of  radiation  convivial.  We  drink 
limitless  old  October  from  handsome  flagons,  and  we 
argue  mightily  about  Pride  (his  weak  point)  and  the 
nature  of  Deity.  A  hygienic,  attentive,  and  essen- 
tially anaesthetic  Eagle  checks,  in  the  absence  of 
exercise,  any  undue  enlargement  of  our  Promethean 
livers.  .  .  .  Chesterton  often — but  never  by  any 
chance  Belloc.  Belloc  I  admire  beyond  measure, 
but  there  is  a  sort  of  partisan  viciousness  about 
Belloc  that  bars  him  from  my  celestial  dreams.  He 
never  figures,  no,  not  even  in  the  remotest  corner, 

205 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

on  my  ceiling.  And  yet  the  divine  artist,  by  some 
strange  skill  that  my  ignorance  of  his  technique  saves 
me  from  the  presumption  of  explaining,  does  indicate 
exactly  where  Belloc  is.  A  little  quiver  of  the  paint, 
a  faint  aura,  about  the  spectacular  masses  of  Ches- 
terton? I  am  not  certain.  But  no  intelligent  be- 
holder can  look  up  and  miss  the  remarkable  fact  that 
Belloc  exists — and  that  he  is  away,  safely  away, 
away  in  his  heaven,  which  is,  of  course,  the  Park 
Lane  Imperialist's  hell.  There  he  presides.  .  .  . 

But  in  this  life  I  do  not  meet  Chesterton  exalted 
upon  clouds,  and  there  is  but  the  mockery  of  that 
endless  leisure  for  abstract  discussion  afforded  by 
my  painted  entertainments.  I  live  in  an  urgent  and 
incessant  world,  which  is  at  its  best  a  wildly  beautiful 
confusion  of  impressions  'and  at  its  worst  a  dingy 
uproar.  It  crowds  upon  us  and  jostles  us,  we  get 
our  little  interludes  for  thinking  and  talking  between 
much  rough  scuffling  and  laying  about  us  with  our 
fists.  And  I  cannot  afford  to  be  continually  bicker- 
ing with  Chesterton  and  Belloc  about  forms  of  ex- 
pression. There  are  others  for  whom  I  want  to  save 
my  knuckles.  One  may  be  wasteful  in  peace  and 
leisure,  but  economies  are  the  soul  of  conflict. 

In  many  ways  we  three  are  closely  akin ;  we  diverge 
not  by  necessity  but  accident,  because  we  speak  in 
different  dialects  and  have  divergent  metaphysics. 
All  that  I  can  I  shall  persuade  to  my  way  of  thinking 
about  thought  and  to  the  use  of  words  in  my  loose, 
expressive  manner,  but  Belloc  and  Chesterton  and  I 

206 


ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 

are  too  grown  and  set  to  change  our  languages  now 
and  learn  new  ones;  we  are  on  different  roads,  and 
so  we  must  needs  shout  to  one  another  across  inter- 
vening abysses.  These  two  say  Socialism  is  a  thing 
they  do  not  want  for  men,  and  I  say  Socialism  is 
above  all  what  I  want  for  men.  We  shall  go  on 
saying  that  now  to  the  end  of  our  days.  But  what 
we  do  all  three  want  is  something  very  alike.  Our 
different  roads  are  parallel.  I  aim  at  a  growing  col- 
lective life,  a  perpetually  enhanced  inheritance  for 
our  race,  through  the  fullest,  freest  development  of 
the  individual  life.  What  they  aim  at  ultimately  I 
do  not  understand,  but  it  is  manifest  that  its  imme- 
diate form  is  the  fullest  and  freest  development  of  the 
individual  life.  We  all  three  hate  equally  and  sym- 
pathetically the  spectacle  of  human  beings  blown  up 
with  windy  wealth  and  irresponsible  power  as  cruelly 
and  absurdly  as  boys  blow  up  frogs;  we  all  three 
detest  the  complex  causes  that  dwarf  and  cripple 
lives  from  the  moment  of  birth  and  starve  and  debase 
great  masses  of  mankind.  We  want  as  universally 
as  possible  the  jolly  life,  men  and  women  warm- 
blooded and  well  aired,  acting  freely  and  joyously, 
gathering  life  as  children  gather  corn-cockles  in  corn. 
We  all  three  want  people  to  have  property  of  a  real 
and  personal  sort,  to  have  the  son,  as  Chesterton  put 
it,  bringing  up  the  port  his  father  laid  down,  and 
pride  in  the  pears  one  has  grown  in  one's  own  garden. 
And  I  agree  with  Chesterton  that  giving — giving  one- 
self out  of  love  and  fellowship — is  the  salt  of  life. 

207 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

But  there  I  diverge  from  him,  less  in  spirit  I  think 
than  in  the  manner  of  his  expression.  There  is  a 
base  because  impersonal  way  of  giving.  "Standing 
drink,"  which  he  praises  as  noble,  is  just  the  thing  I 
cannot  stand,  the  ultimate  mockery  and  vulgarisation 
of  that  fine  act  of  bringing  out  the  cherished  thing 
saved  for  the  heaven-sent  guest.  It  is  a  mere  com- 
mercial transaction,  essentially  of  the  evil  of  our 
time.  Think  of  it!  Two  temporarily  homeless  be- 
ings agree  to  drink  together,  and  they  turn  in  and 
face  the  public  supply  of  drink  (a  little  vitiated  by 
private  commercial  necessities)  in  the  public-house. 
(It  is  horrible  that  life  should  be  so  wholesale  and 
heartless.)  And  Jones,  with  a  sudden  effusion  of 
manner,  thrusts  twopence  or  ninepence  (got  God 
know  how)  into  the  economic  mysteries  and  personal 
delicacy  of  Brown.  I'd  as  soon  a  man  slipped  six- 
pence down  my  neck.  If  Jones  has  used  love  and 
sympathy  to  detect  a  certain  real  thirst  and  need  in 
Brown  and  knowledge  and  power  in  its  assuaging  by 
some  specially  appropriate  fluid,  then  we  have  an 
altogether  different  matter;  but  the  common  business 
of  "standing  treat"  and  giving  presents  and  enter- 
tainments is  as  proud  and  unspiritual  as  cock- 
crowing,  as  foolish  and  inhuman  as  that  sorry  com- 
pendium of  mercantile  vices,  the  game  of  poker,  and 
I  am  amazed  to  find  Chesterton  commend  it. 

But  that  is  a  criticism  by  the  way.  Chesterton 
and  Belloc  agree  with  the  Socialist  that  the  present 
world  does  not  give  at  all  what  they  want.  They 

208 


ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 

agree  that  it  fails  to  do  so  through  a  wild  derange- 
ment of  our  property  relations.  They  are  in  agree- 
ment with  the  common  contemporary  man  (whose 
creed  is  stated,  I  think,  not  unfairly,  but  with  the 
omission  of  certain  important  articles  by  Chesterton) 
that  the  derangements  of  our  property  relations  are 
to  be  remedied  by  concerted  action  and  in  part  by 
altered  laws.  The  land  and  all  sorts  of  great  com- 
mon interests  must  be,  if  not  owned,  then  at  least 
controlled,  managed,  checked,  redistributed  by  the 
State.  Our  real  difference  is  only  about  a  little  more 
or  a  little  less  owning.  I  do  not  see  how  Belloc  and 
Chesterton  can  stand  for  anything  but  a  strong 
State  as  against  those  wild  monsters  of  property,  the 
strong,  big  private  owners.  The  State  must  be  com- 
plex and  powerful  enough  to  prevent  them.  State 
or  plutocrat,  there  is  really  no  other  practical  alterna- 
tive before  the  world  at  the  present  time.  Either 
we  have  to  let  the  big  financial  adventurers,  the 
aggregating  capitalist  and  his  Press,  in  a  loose,  in- 
formal combination,  rule  the  earth,  either  we  have 
got  to  stand  aside  from  preventive  legislation  and 
leave  things  to  work  out  on  their  present  lines,  or 
we  have  to  construct  a  collective  organisation  suffi- 
ciently strong  for  the  protection  of  the  liberties  of 
the  some-day-to-be-jolly  common  man.  So  far  we 
go  in  common.  If  Belloc  and  Chesterton  are  not 
Socialists,  they  are  at  any  rate  not  anti-Socialists. 
If  they  say  they  want  an  organised  Christian  State 
(which  involves  practically  seven-tenths  of  the  So- 

209 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

cialist  desire),  then,  in  the  face  of  our  big  common 
enemies,  of  adventurous  capital,  of  alien  Imperial- 
ism, base  ambition,  base  intelligence,  and  common 
prejudice  and  ignorance,  I  do  not  mean  to  quarrel 
with  them  politically,  so  long  as  they  force  no  quarrel 
on  me.  Their  organised  Christian  State  is  nearer 
the  organised  State  I  want  than  our  present  plu- 
tocracy. Our  ideals  will  fight  some  day,  and  it  will 
be,  I  know,  a  first-rate  fight,  but  to  fight  now  is  to 
let  the  enemy  in.  When  we  have  got  all  we  want 
in  common,  then  and  only  then  can  we  afford  to 
differ.  I  have  never  believed  that  a  Socialist  Party 
could  hope  to  form  a  Government  in  this  country  in 
my  lifetime;  I  believe  it  less  now  than  ever  I  did. 
I  don't  know  if  any  of  my  Fabian  colleagues  enter- 
tain so  remarkable  a  hope.  But  if  they  do  not,  then 
unless  their  political  aim  is  pure  cantankerousness, 
they  must  contemplate  a  working  political  combina- 
tion between  the  Socialist  members  in  Parliament  and 
just  that  non-capitalist  section  of  the  Liberal  Party 
for  which  Chesterton  and  Belloc  speak.  Perpetual 
opposition  is  a  dishonourable  aim  in  politics;  and  a 
man  who  mingles  in  political  development  with  no 
intention  of  taking  on  responsible  tasks  unless  he 
gets  all  his  particular  formulae  accepted  is  a  pervert, 
a  victim  of  Irish  bad  example,  and  unfit  for  decent 
democratic  institutions.  .  .  . 

I  digress  again,  I  see,  but  my  drift  I  hope  is  clear. 
Differ  as  we  may,  Belloc  and  Chesterton  are  with 
all  Socialists  in  being  on  the  same  side  of  the  great 

210 


ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 

political  and  social  cleavage  that  opens  at  the  present 
time.  We  and  they  are  with  the  interests  of  the  mass 
of  common  men  as  against  that  growing  organisation 
of  great  owners  who  have  common  interests  directly 
antagonistic  to  those  of  the  community  and  State. 
We  Socialists  are  only  secondarily  politicians.  Our 
primary  business  is  not  to  impose  upon,  but  to  ram 
right  into  the  substance  of  that  object  of  Chester- 
ton's solicitude,  the  circle  of  ideas  of  the  common 
man,  the  idea  of  the  State  as  his  own,  as  a  thing  he 
serves  and  is  served  by.  We  want  to  add  to  his 
sense  of  property  rather  than  offend  it.  If  I  had 
my  way  I  would  do  that  at  the  street  corners  and 
on  the  trams,  I  would  take  down  that  alien-looking 
and  detestable  inscription  "L.  C.  C.,"  and  put  up, 
"This  Tram,  this  Street,  belongs  to  the  People  of 
London."  Would  Chesterton  or  Belloc  quarrel  with 
that?  Suppose  that  Chesterton  is  right,  and  that 
there  are  incurable  things  in  the  mind  of  the  common 
man  flatly  hostile  to  our  ideals;  so  much  of  our  ideals 
will  fail.  But  we  are  doing  our  best  by  our  lights, 
and  all  we  can.  What  are  Chesterton  and  Belloc 
doing?  If  our  ideal  is  partly  right  and  partly  wrong, 
are  they  trying  to  build  up  a  better  ideal  ?  Will  they 
state  a  Utopia  and  how  they  propose  it  shall  be 
managed?  If  they  lend  their  weight  only  to  such 
fine  old  propositions  as  that  a  man  wants  freedom, 
that  he  has  a  right  to  do  as  he  likes  with  his  own,  and 
so  on,  they  won't  help  the  common  man  much.  All 
that  fine  talk,  without  some  further  exposition,  goes 

211 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

to  sustain  Mr.  Rockefeller's  simple  human  love  of 
property,  and  the  woman  and  child  sweating  manu- 
facturer in  his  fight  for  the  inspector-free  home 
industry.  I  bought  on  a  bookstall  the  other  day  a 
pamphlet  full  of  misrepresentation  and  bad  argu- 
ment against  Socialism  by  an  Australian  Jew,  pub- 
lished by  the  Single-Tax  people  apparently  in  a  dis- 
interested attempt  to  free  the  land  from  the  land- 
owner by  the  simple  expedient  of  abusing  anyone 
else  who  wanted  to  do  as  much  but  did  not  hold 
Henry  George  to  be  God  and  Lord;  and  I  know  So- 
cialists who  will  protest  with  tears  in  their  eyes 
against  association  with  any  human  being  who  sings 
any  song  but  the  "Red  Flag"  and  doubts  whether 
Marx  had  much  experience  of  affairs.  Well,  there  is 
no  reason  why  Chesterton  and  Belloc  should  at  their 
level  do  the  same  sort  of  thing.  When  we  talk  on  a 
ceiling  or  at  a  dinner-party  with  any  touch  of  the 
celestial  in  its  composition,  Chesterton  and  I,  Bel- 
loc and  I,  are  antagonists  with  an  undying  feud,  but 
in  the  fight  against  human  selfishness  and  narrow- 
ness and  for  a  finer,  juster  law,  we  are  brothers — 
at  the  remotest,  half-brothers. 

Chesterton  isn't  a  Socialist — agreed !  But  now,  as 
between  us  and  the  Master  of  Elibank  or  Sir  Hugh 
Bell  or  any  other  Free  Trade  Liberal  capitalist  or 
landlord,  which  side  is  he  on?  You  cannot  have 
more  than  one  fight  going  on  in  the  political  arena 
at  the  same  time,  because  only  one  party  or  group  of 
parties  can  win. 

212 


ABOUT  CHESTERTON  AND  BELLOC 

And  going  back  for  a  moment  to  that  point  about 
a  Utopia,  I  want  one  from  Chesterton.  Purely  un- 
helpful criticism  isn't  enough  from  a  man  of  his  size. 
It  isn't  justifiable  for  him  to  go  about  sitting  on  other 
people's  Utopias.  I  appeal  to  his  sense  of  fair  play. 
I  have  done  my  best  to  reconcile  the  conception  of 
a  free  and  generous  style  of  personal  living  with  a 
social  organisation  that  will  save  the  world  from  the 
harsh  predominance  of  dull,  persistent,  energetic, 
unscrupulous  grabbers  tempered  only  by  the  vulgar 
extravagance  of  their  wives  and  sons.  It  isn't  an 
adequate  reply  to  say  that  nobody  stood  treat  there, 
and  that  the  simple,  generous  people  like  to  beat 
their  own  wives  and  children  on  occasion  in  a  loving 
and  intimate  manner,  and  that  they  won't  endure  the 
spirit  of  Mr.  Sidney  Webb. 

15 


ABOUT  SIR  THOMAS  MORE 

THERE  are  some  writers  who  are  chiefly  interesting 
in  themselves,  and  some  whom  chance  and  the  agree- 
ment of  men  have  picked  out  as  symbols  and  con- 
venient indications  of  some  particular  group  or  tem- 
perament of  opinions.  To  the  latter  it  is  that  Sir 
Thomas  More  belongs.  An  age  and  a  type  of  mind 
have  found  in  him  and  his  Utopia  a  figurehead  and 
a  token;  and  pleasant  and  honourable  as  his  person- 
ality and  household  present  themselves  to  the  modern 
reader,  it  is  doubtful  if  they  would  by  this  time  have 
retained  any  peculiar  distinction  among  the  many 
other  contemporaries  of  whom  we  have  chance 
glimpses  in  letters  and  suchlike  documents,  were 
it  not  that  he  happened  to  be  the  first  man  of  affairs 
in  England  to  imitate  the  Republic  of  Plato.  By 
that  chance  it  fell  to  him  to  give  the  world  a  noun 
and  an  adjective  of  abuse,  "Utopian,"  and  to  record 
how  under  the  stimulus  of  Plato's  releasing  influence 
the  opening  problems  of  our  modern  world  presented 
themselves  to  the  English  mind  of  his  time.  For  the 
most  part  the  problems  that  exercised  him  are  the 
problems  that  exercise  us  to-day,  some  of  them,  it 
may  be,  have  grown  up  and  intermarried,  new  ones 

214 


ABOUT  SIR  THOMAS  MORE 

have  joined  their  company,  but  few,  if  any,  have 
disappeared,  and  it  is  alike  in  his  resemblances  to  and 
differences  from  the  modern  speculative  mind  that 
his  essential  interest  lies. 

The  portrait  presented  by  contemporary  mention 
and  his  own  intentional  and  unintentional  admis- 
sions, is  of  an  active-minded  and  agreeable-mannered 
man,  a  hard  worker,  very  markedly  prone  to  quips 
and  whimsical  sayings  and  plays  upon  words,  and 
aware  of  a  double  reputation  as  a  man  of  erudition 
and  a  wit.  This  latter  quality  it  was  that  won  him 
advancement  at  court,  and  it  may  have  been  his  too 
clearly  confessed  reluctance  to  play  the  part  of  an 
informal  table  jester  to  his  king  that  laid  the  grounds 
of  that  deepening  royal  resentment  that  ended  only 
with  his  execution.  But  he  was  also  valued  by  the 
king  for  more  solid  merits,  he  was  needed  by  the 
king,  and  it  was  more  than  a  table  scorned  or  a  clash 
of  opinion  upon  the  validity  of  divorce;  it  was  a 
more  general  estrangement  and  avoidance  of  service 
that  caused  that  fit  of  regal  petulance  by  which 
he  died. 

It  would  seem  that  he  began  and  ended  his  career 
in  the  orthodox  religion  and  a  general  acquiescence 
in  the  ideas  and  customs  of  his  time,  and  he  played 
an  honourable  and  acceptable  part  in  that  time;  but 
his  permanent  interest  lies  not  in  his  general  con- 
formity but  in  his  incidental  scepticism,  in  the  fact 
that  underlying  the  observances  and  recognised  rules 
and  limitations  that  give  the  texture  of  his  life  were 

215 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  profoundest  doubts,  and  that,  stirred  and  dis- 
turbed by  Plato,  he  saw  fit  to  write  them  down.  One 
may  question  if  such  scepticism  is  in  itself  unusual, 
whether  any  large  proportion  of  great  statesmen, 
great  ecclesiastics  and  administrators  have  escaped 
phases  of  destructive  self-criticism,  of  destructive 
criticism  of  the  principles  upon  which  their  general 
careers  were  framed.  But  few  have  made  so  public 
an  admission  as  Sir  Thomas  More.  A  good  Catholic 
undoubtedly  he  was,  and  yet  we  find  him  capable  of 
conceiving  a  non-Christian  community  excelling  all 
Christendom  in  wisdom  and  virtue;  in  practice  his 
sense  of  conformity  and  orthodoxy  was  manifest 
enough,  but  in  his  Utopia  he  ventures  to  contem- 
plate, and  that  not  merely  wistfully,  but  with  some 
confidence,  the  possibility  of  an  absolute  religious 
toleration. 

The  Utopia  is  none  the  less  interesting  because 
it  is  one  of  the  most  inconsistent  of  books.  Never 
were  the  forms  of  Socialism  and  Communism  ani- 
mated by  so  entirely  an  Individualist  soul.  The 
hands  are  the  hands  of  Plato,  the  wide-thinking 
Greek,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  a  humane,  public- 
spirited,  but  limited  and  very  practical  English 
gentleman  who  takes  the  inferiority  of  his  inferiors 
for  granted,  dislikes  friars  and  tramps  and  loafers 
and  all  undisciplined  and  unproductive  people,  and 
is  ruler  in  his  own  household.  He  abounds  in  sound 
practical  ideas,  for  the  migration  of  harvesters,  for 
the  universality  of  gardens  and  the  artificial  incuba- 

216 


ABOUT  SIR  THOMAS  MORE 

tion  of  eggs,  and  he  sweeps  aside  all  Plato's  suggestion 
of  the  citizen  woman  as  though  it  had  never  entered 
his  mind.  He  had  indeed  the  Whig  temperament, 
and  it  manifested  itself  down  even  to  the  practice  of 
reading  aloud  in  company,  which  still  prevails  among 
the  more  representative  survivors  of  the  Whig  tra- 
dition. He  argues  ably  against  private  property, 
but  no  thought  of  any  such  radicalism  as  the  admis- 
sion of  those  poor  peons  of  his  with  head  half -shaved 
and  glaring  uniform  against  escape,  to  participation 
in  ownership,  appears  in  his  proposals.  His  com- 
munism is  all  for  the  convenience  of  his  Syphogrants 
and  Tranibores,  those  gentlemen  of  gravity  and  ex- 
perience, lest  one  should  swell  up  above  the  others. 
So  too  is  the  essential  Whiggery  of  the  limitation 
of  the  Prince's  revenues.  It  is  the  very  spirit 
of  eighteenth  -  century  Constitutionalism.  And  his 
Whiggery  bears  Utilitarianism  instead  of  the  vanity 
of  a  flower.  Among  his  cities,  all  of  a  size,  so  that 
"he  that  knoweth  one  knoweth  all,"  the  Benthamite 
would  have  revised  his  sceptical  theology  and  ad- 
mitted the  possibility  of  heaven. 

Like  any  Whig,  More  exalted  reason  above  the 
imagination  at  every  point,  and  so  he  fails  to  under- 
stand the  magic  prestige  of  gold,  making  that  beau- 
tiful metal  into  vessels  of  dishonour  to  urge  his  case 
against  it,  nor  had  he  any  perception  of  the  charm 
of  extravagance,  for  example,  or  the  desirability  of 
various  clothing.  The  Utopians  went  all  in  coarse 
linen  and  undyed  wool — why  should  the  world  be 

217 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

coloured  ? — and  all  the  economy  of  labour  and  short- 
ening of  the  working  day  was  to  no  other  end  than 
to  prolong  the  years  of  study  and  the  joys  of  reading 
aloud,  the  simple  satisfactions  of  the  good  boy  at  his 
lessons,  to  the  very  end  of  life.  "In  the  institution 
of  that  weal  publique  this  end  is  only  and  chiefly 
pretended  and  minded,  that  what  time  may  possibly 
be  spared  from  the  necessary  occupations  and  affairs 
of  the  commonwealth,  all  that  the  citizens  should 
withdraw  from  the  bodily  service  to  the  free  liberty 
of  the  mind  and  garnishing  of  the  same.  For  herein 
they  suppose  the  felicity  of  this  life  to  consist." 

Indeed,  it  is  no  paradox  to  say  that  Utopia, 
which  has  by  a  conspiracy  of  accidents  become  a 
proverb  for  undisciplined  fancifulness  in  social  and 
political  matters,  is  in  reality  a  very  unimaginative 
work.  In  that,  next  to  the  accident  of  its  priority, 
lies  the  secret  of  its  continuing  interest.  In  some 
respects  it  is  like  one  of  those  precious  and  delightful 
scrapbooks  people  disinter  in  old  country  houses ;  its 
very  poverty  of  synthetic  power  leaves  its  ingredi- 
ents, the  cuttings  from  and  imitations  of  Plato,  the 
recipe  for  the  hatching  of  eggs,  the  stern  resolutions 
against  scoundrels  and  rough  fellows  all  the  sharper 
and  brighter.  There  will  always  be  found  people  to 
read  in  it,  over  and  above  the  countless  multitudes 
who  will  continue  ignorantly  to  use  its  name  for 
everything  most  alien  to  More's  essential  quality. 


TRAFFIC  AND  REBUILDING 

THE  London  traffic  problem  is  just  one  of  those 
questions  that  appeal  very  strongly  to  the  more 
prevalent  and  less  charitable  types  of  English  mind. 
It  has  a  practical  and  constructive  air,  it  deals  with 
impressively  enormous  amounts  of  tangible  property, 
it  rests  with  a  comforting  effect  of  solidity  upon 
assumptions  that  are  at  once  doubtful  and  desirable. 
It  seems  free  from  metaphysical  considerations,  and 
it  has  none  of  those  disconcerting  personal  applica- 
tions, those  penetrations  towards  intimate  qualities, 
that  makes  eugenics,  for  example,  faintly  but  persist- 
ently uncomfortable.  It  is  indeed  an  ideal  problem 
for  a  healthy,  hopeful,  and  progressive  middle-aged 
public  man.  And,  as  I  say,  it  deals  with  enormous 
amounts  of  tangible  property. 

Like  all  really  serious  and  respectable  British 
problems,  it  has  to  be  handled  gently  to  prevent  its 
coming  to  pieces  in  the  gift.  It  is  safest  in  charge 
of  the  expert,  that  wonderful  last  gift  of  time.  He 
will  talk  rapidly  about  congestion,  long-felt  wants, 
low  efficiency,  economy,  and  get  you  into  his  building 
and  rebuilding  schemes  with  the  minimum  of  doubt 
and  head-swimming.  He  is  like  a  good  Hendon 

219 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

pilot.  Unspecialised  writers  have  the  destructive 
analytical  touch.  They  pull  the  wrong  levers.  So 
far  as  one  can  gather  from  the  specialists  on  the 
question,  there  is  very  considerable  congestion  in 
many  of  the  London  thoroughfares,  delays  that  seem 
to  be  avoidable  occur  in  the  delivery  of  goods,  multi- 
tudes of  empty  vans  cumber  the  streets,  we  have 
hundreds  of  acres  of  idle  trucks — there  are  more 
acres  of  railway  sidings  than  of  public  parks  in 
Greater  London — and  our  Overseas  cousins  find  it 
ticklish  work  crossing  Regent  Street  and  Piccadilly. 
Regarding  life  simply  as  an  affair  of  getting  people 
and  things  from  where  they  are  to  where  they  appear 
to  be  wanted,  this  seems  all  very  muddled  and 
wanton.  So  far  it  is  quite  easy  to  agree  with  the 
expert.  And  some  of  the  various  and  entirely  in- 
compatible schemes  experts  are  giving  us  by  way  of 
a  remedy,  appeal  very  strongly  to  the  imagination. 
For  example,  there  is  the  railway  clearing  house, 
which,  it  is  suggested,  should  cover  I  do  not  know 
how  many  acres  of  what  is  now  slumland  in  Shore- 
ditch.  The  position  is  particularly  convenient  for 
an  underground  connection  with  every  main  line 
into  London.  Upon  the  underground  level  of  this 
great  building  every  goods  train  into  London  will 
run.  Its  trucks  and  vans  will  be  unloaded,  the  goods 
passed  into  lifts,  which  will  take  every  parcel,  large 
and  small,  at  once  to  a  huge,  ingeniously  contrived 
sorting-floor  above.  There  in  a  manner  at  once 
simple,  ingenious  and  effective,  they  will  be  sorted 

220 


TRAFFIC  AND  REBUILDING 

and  returned,  either  into  delivery  vans  at  the  street 
level  or  to  the  trains  emptied  and  now  reloading  on 
the  train  level.  Above  and  below  these  three  floors 
will  be  extensive  warehouse  accommodation.  Such 
a  scheme  would  not  only  release  almost  all  the  vast 
area  of  London  now  under  railway  yards  for  parks 
and  housing,  but  it  would  give  nearly  every  delivery 
van  an  effective  load,  and  probably  reduce  the  num- 
ber of  standing  and  empty  vans  or  half -empty  vans 
on  the  streets  of  London  to  a  quarter  or  an  eighth  of 
the  present  number.  Mostly  these  are  heavy  horse 
vans,  and  their  disappearance  would  greatly  facilitate 
the  conversion  of  the  road  surfaces  to  the  hard  and 
even  texture  needed  for  horseless  traffic. 

But  that  is  a  scheme  too  comprehensive  and 
rational  for  the  ordinary  student  of  the  London 
traffic  problem,  whose  mind  runs  for  the  most  part 
on  costly  and  devastating  rearrangements  of  the 
existing  roadways.  Moreover,  it  would  probably 
secure  a  maximum  of  effect  with  a  minimum  of 
property  manipulation;  always  an  undesirable  con- 
sideration in  practical  politics.  And  it  would  com- 
mit London  and  England  to  goods  transit  by  railway 
for  another  century.  Far  more  attractive  to  the 
expert  advisers  of  our  various  municipal  authorities 
are  such  projects  as  a  new  Thames  bridge  scheme, 
which  will  (with  incalculable  results)  inject  a  new 
stream  of  traffic  into  Saint  Paul's  Churchyard;  and 
the  removal  of  Charing  Cross  Station  to  the  south 
side  of  the  river.  Then,  again,  we  have  the  system- 

221 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

atic  widening  of  various  thoroughfares,  the  shunt- 
ing of  tramways  into  traffic  streams,  and  many 
amusing,  expensive,  and  interesting  tunnellings  and 
clearances.  Taken  together,  these  huge  reconstruc- 
tions of  London  are  incoherent  and  conflicting;  each 
is  based  on  its  own  assumptions  and  separate  "ex- 
pert "  advice,  and  the  resulting  new  opening  plays  its 
part  in  the  general  circulation  as  duct  or  aspirator, 
often  with  the  most  surprising  results.  The  dis- 
cussion of  the  London  traffic  problem  as  we  practise 
it  in  our  clubs  is  essentially  the  sage  turning  over 
and  over  again  of  such  fragmentary  schemes,  head- 
shakings  over  the  vacant  sites  about  Aldwych  and 
the  Strand,  brilliant  petty  suggestions  and  —  dis- 
persal. Meanwhile  the  experts  intrigue;  one  par- 
tial plan  after  another  gets  itself  accepted,  this  and 
that  ancient  landmark  perish,  builders  grow  rich, 
and  architects  infamous,  and  some  Tower  Bridge 
horror,  some  vulgarity  of  the  Automobile  Club  type, 
some  Buckingham  Palace  atrocity,  some  Regent 
Street  stupidity,  or  some  such  cramped  and  thwarted 
thing  as  that  new  arch  which  gives  upon  Charing 
Cross  is  added  to  the  confusion.  I  do  not  see  any 
reason  to  suppose  that  this  continuous  muddle  of 
partial  destruction  and  partial  rebuilding  is  not  to 
constitute  the  future  history  of  London. 

Let  us,  however,  drop  the  expert  methods  and 
handle  this  question  rather  more  rudely.  Do  we 
want  London  rebuilt?  If  we  do,  is  there,  after  all, 
any  reason  why  we  should  rebuild  it  on  its  present 

222 


TRAFFIC  AND  REBUILDING 

site?  London  is  where  it  is  for  reasons  that  have 
long  ceased  to  be  valid;  it  grew  there,  it  has  accumu- 
lated associations,  an  immense  tradition,  that  this 
constant  mucking  about  of  builders  and  architects  is 
destroying  almost  as  effectually  as  removal  to  a  new 
site.  The  old  sort  of  rebuilding  was  a  natural  and 
picturesque  process,  house  by  house,  and  street  by 
street,  a  thing  as  pleasing  and  almost  as  natural  in 
effect  as  the  spreading  and  interlacing  of  trees;  as 
this  new  building,  this  clearance  of  areas,  the  piercing 
of  avenues,  becomes  more  comprehensive,  it  becomes 
less  reasonable.  If  we  can  do  such  big  things  we 
may  surely  attempt  bigger  things,  so  that  whether 
we  want  to  plan  a  new  capital  or  preserve  the  old, 
it  comes  at  last  to  the  same  thing,  that  it  is  unreason- 
able to  be  constantly  pulling  down  the  London  we 
have  and  putting  it  up  again.  Let  us  drain  away 
our  heavy  traffic  into  tunnels,  set  up  that  clearing- 
house plan,  and  control  the  growth  at  the  periphery, 
which  is  still  so  witless  and  ugly,  and,  save  for  the 
manifest  tidying  and  preserving  that  is  needed, 
begin  to  leave  the  central  parts  of  London,  which  are 
extremely  interesting  even  where  they  are  not  quite 
beautiful,  in  peace. 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

IT  has  long  been  generally  recognised  that  there 
are  two  quite  divergent  ways  of  attacking  sociological 
and  economic  questions,  one  that  is  called  scientific 
and  one  that  is  not,  and  I  claim  no  particular  virtue 
in  the  recognition  of  that;  but  I  do  claim  a  certain 
freshness  in  my  analysis  of  this  difference,  and  it  is 
to  that  analysis  that  your  attention  is  now  called. 
When  I  claim  freshness  I  do  not  make,  you  under- 
stand, any  claim  to  original  discovery.  What  I  have 
to  say,  and  have  been  saying  for  some  time,  is  also 
.more  or  less,  and  with  certain  differences,  to  be  found 
in  the  thought  of  Professor  Bosanquet,  for  example, 
in  Alfred  Sidgwick's  Use  of  Words  in  Reasoning, 
in  Sigwart's  Logic,  in  contemporary  American  met- 
aphysical speculation.  I  am  only  one  incidental 
voice  speaking  in  a  general  movement  of  thought. 
My  trend  of  thought  leads  me  to  deny  that  sociology 
is  a  science,  or  only  a  science  in  the  same  loose  sense 
that  modern  history  is  a  science,  and  to  throw  doubt 
upon  the  value  of  sociology  that  follows  too  closely 
what  is  called  the  scientific  method. 

The  drift  of  my  argument  is  to  dispute  not  only 
that  sociology  is  a  science,  but  also  to  deny  that 

224 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

Herbert  Spencer  and  Comte  are  to  be  exalted  as  the 
founders  of  a  new  and  fruitful  system  of  human 
inquiry.  I  find  myself  forced  to  depreciate  these 
modern  idols,  and  to  reinstate  the  Greek  social 
philosophers  in  their  vacant  niches,  to  ask  you  rather 
to  go  to  Plato  for  the  proper  method,  the  proper  way 
of  thinking  sociologically. 

We  certainly  owe  the  word  Sociology  to  Comte, 
a  man  of  exceptionally  methodical  quality.  I  hold 
he  developed  the  word  logically  from  an  arbitrary 
assumption  that  the  whole  universe  of  being  was 
reducible  to  measurable  and  commeasurable  and 
exact  and  consistent  expressions. 

In  a  very  obvious  way,  sociology  seemed  to  Comte 
to  crown  the  edifice  of  the  sciences;  it  was  to  be  to 
the  statesman  what  pathology  and  physiology  were 
to  the  doctor;  and  one  gathers  that,  for  the  most  part, 
he  regarded  it  as  an  intellectual  procedure  in  no 
way  differing  from  physics.  His  classification  of 
the  sciences  shows  pretty  clearly  that  he  thought  of 
them  all  as  exact  logical  systematisations  of  fact 
arising  out  of  each  other  in  a  synthetic  order,  each 
lower  one  containing  the  elements  of  a  lucid  explana- 
tion of  those  above  it — physics  explaining  chemistry ; 
chemistry,  physiology;  physiology,  sociology;  and  so 
forth.  His  actual  method  was  altogether  unscien- 
tific; but  through  all  his  work  runs  the  assumption 
that  in  contrast  with  his  predecessors  he  is  really 
being  as  exact  and  universally  valid  as  mathematics. 
To  Herbert  Spencer — very  appropriately,  since  his 

225 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

mental  characteristics  make  him  the  English  parallel 
to  Comte — we  owe  the  naturalisation  of  the  word 
in  English.  His  mind  being  of  greater  calibre  than 
Comte's,  the  subject  acquired  in  his  hands  a  far 
more  progressive  character.  Herbert  Spencer  was 
less  unfamiliar  with  natural  history  than  with  any 
other  branch  of  practical  scientific  work;  and  it  was 
natural  he  should  turn  to  it  for  precedents  in  socio- 
logical research.  His  mind  was  invaded  by  the  idea 
of  classification,  by  memories  of  specimens  and 
museums;  and  he  initiated  that  accumulation  of 
desiccated  anthropological  anecdotes  that  still  figures 
importantly  in  current  sociological  work.  On  the 
lines  he  initiated  sociological  investigation,  what 
there  is  of  it,  still  tends  to  go. 

From  these  two  sources  mainly  the  work  of  con- 
temporary sociologists  derives.  But  there  persists 
about  it  a  curious  discursiveness  that  reflects  upon 
the  power  and  value  of  the  initial  impetus.  Mr. 
V.  V.  Branford,  the  able  secretary  of  the  Sociological 
Society,  recently  attempted  a  useful  work  in  a  classi- 
fication of  the  methods  of  what  he  calls  "approach," 
a  word  that  seems  to  me  eminently  judicious  and 
expressive.  A  review  of  the  first  volume  the  Socio- 
logical Society  has  produced  brings  home  the  aptness 
of  this  image  of  exploratory  operations,  of  experi- 
ments in  "taking  a  line."  The  names  of  Dr.  Beattie 
Crozier  and  Mr.  Benjamin  Kidd  recall  works  that 
impress  one  as  large-scale  sketches  of  a  proposed 
science  rather  than  concrete  beginnings  and  achieve- 

226 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

ments.  The  search  for  an  arrangement,  a  ' '  method, ' ' 
continues  as  though  they  were  not.  The  desperate 
resort  to  the  analogical  method  of  Commenius  is 
confessed  by  Dr.  Steinmetz,  who  talks  of  social 
morphology,  physiology,  pathology,  and  so  forth. 
There  is  also  a  less  initiative  disposition  in  the 
Vicomte  Combes  de  Lestrade  and  in  the  work  of  Pro- 
fessor Giddings.  In  other  directions  sociological 
work  is  apt  to  lose  its  general  reference  altogether, 
to  lapse  towards  some  department  of  activity  not 
primarily  sociological  at  all.  Examples  of  this  are 
the  works  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Sidney  Webb,  M.  Ostrog- 
orski  and  M.  Gustave  le  Bon.  From  a  contempla- 
tion of  all  this  diversity  Professor  Durkheim  emerges, 
demanding  a  "synthetic  science,"  "certain  synthetic 
conceptions" — and  Professor  Karl  Pearson  endorses 
the  demand — to  fuse  all  these  various  activities  into 
something  that  will  live  and  grow.  What  is  it  that 
tangles  this  question  so  curiously  that  there  is  not 
only  a  failure  to  arrive  at  a  conclusion,  but  a  failure 
to  join  issue? 

Well,  there  is  a  certain,  not  too  clearly  recognised, 
order  in  the  sciences  to  which  I  wish  to  call  your 
attention,  and  which  forms  the  gist  of  my  case  against 
this  scientific  pretension.  There  is  a  gradation  in  the 
importance  of  the  instance  as  one  passes  from 
mechanics  and  physics  and  chemistry,  through  the 
biological  sciences  to  economics  and  sociology,  a 
gradation  whose  correlatives  and  implications  have 
not  yet  received  adequate  recognition,  and  which 

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SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

do  profoundly  affect  the  method  of  study  and  re- 
search in  each  science. 

Let  me  begin  by  pointing  out  that,  in  the  more 
modern  conceptions  of  logic,  it  is  recognised  that 
there  are  no  identically  similar  objective  experiences ; 
the  disposition  is  to  conceive  all  real  objective  being 
as  individual  and  unique.  This  is  not  a  singular 
eccentric  idea  of  mine;  it  is  one  for  which  ample 
support  is  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  absolutely 
respectable  contemporaries,  who  are  quite  untainted 
by  association  with  fiction.  It  is  now  understood 
that  conceivably  only  in  the  subjective  world,  and 
in  theory  and  the  imagination,  do  we  deal  with  iden- 
tically similar  units,  and  with  absolutely  commen- 
surable quantities.  In  the  real  world  it  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  we  deal  at  most  with  practically  similar 
units  and  practically  commensurable  quantities.  But 
there  is  a  strong  bias,  a  sort  of  labour-saving  bias  in 
the  normal  human  mind  to  ignore  this,  and  not  only  to 
speak  but  to  think  of  a  thousand  bricks  or  a  thousand 
sheep  or  a  thousand  sociologists  as  though  they  were 
all  absolutely  true  to  sample.  If  it  is  brought  before 
a  thinker  for  a  moment  that  in  any  special  case  this 
is  not  so,  he  slips  back  to  the  old  attitude  as  soon  as 
his  attention  is  withdrawn.  This  source  of  error 
has,  for  instance,  caught  nearly  the  whole  race  of 
chemists,  with  one  or  two  distinguished  exceptions, 
and  atoms  and  ions  and  so  forth  of  the  same  species 
are  tacitly  assumed  to  be  similar  one  to  another. 
Be  it  noted  that,  so  far  as  the  practical  results  of 

228 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

chemistry  and  physics  go,  it  scarcely  matters  which 
assumption  we  adopt.  For  purposes  of  inquiry  and 
discussion  the  incorrect  one  is  infinitely  more  con- 
venient. 

But  this  ceases  to  be  true  directly  we  emerge  from 
the  region  of  chemistry  and  physics.  In  the  bio- 
logical sciences  of  the  eighteenth  century,  common- 
sense  struggled  hard  to  ignore  individuality  in  shells 
and  plants  and  animals.  There  was  an  attempt  to 
eliminate  the  more  conspicuous  departures  as  ab- 
normalities, as  sports,  nature's  weak  moments,  and 
it  was  only  with  the  establishment  of  Darwin's  great 
generalisations  that  the  hard  and  fast  classificatory 
system  broke  down,  and  individuality  came  to  its 
own.  Yet  there  had  always  been  a  clearly  felt  differ- 
ence between  the  conclusions  of  the  biological  sciences 
and  those  dealing  with  lifeless  substance,  in  the 
relative  vagueness,  the  insubordinate  looseness  and 
inaccuracy  of  the  former.  The  naturalist  accumu- 
lated facts  and  multiplied  names,  but  he  did  not  go 
triumphantly  from  generalisation  to  generalisation 
after  the  fashion  of  the  chemist  or  physicist.  It  is 
easy  to  see,  therefore,  how  it  came  about  that  the 
inorganic  sciences  were  regarded  as  the  true  scientific 
bed-rock.  It  was  scarcely  suspected  that  the  bio- 
logical sciences  might  perhaps,  after  all,  be  truer  than 
the  experimental,  in  spite  of  the  difference  in  prac- 
tical value  in  favour  of  the  latter.  It  was,  and  is  by 
the  great  majority  of  people  to  this  day,  supposed  to 
be  the  latter  that  are  invincibly  true;  and  the  former 
16  229 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

are  regarded  as  a  more  complex  set  of  problems 
merely,  with  obliquities  and  refractions  that  pres- 
ently will  be  explained  away.  Comte  and  Herbert 
Spencer  certainly  seem  to  me  to  have  taken  that 
much  for  granted.  Herbert  Spencer  no  doubt  talked 
of  the  unknown  and  the  unknowable,  but  not  in  this 
sense  as  an  element  of  inexactness  running  through 
all  things.  He  thought  of  the  unknown  as  the 
indefinable  beyond  to  an  immediate  world  that  might 
be  quite  clearly  and  exactly  known. 

Well,  there  is  a  growing  body  of  people  who  are 
beginning  to  hold  the  converse  view — that  counting, 
classification,  measurement,  the  whole  fabric  of 
mathematics,  is  subjective  and  deceitful,  and  that 
the  uniqueness  of  individuals  is  the  objective  truth. 
As  the  number  of  units  taken  diminishes,  the  amount 
of  variety  and  inexactness  of  generalisation  increases, 
because  individuality  tells  more  and  more.  Could 
you  take  men  by  the  thousand  billion,  you  could 
generalise  about  them  as  you  do  about  atoms;  could 
you  take  atoms  singly,  it  may  be  you  would  find 
them  as  individual  as  your  aunts  and  cousins.  That 
concisely  is  the  minority  belief,  and  it  is  the  belief 
on  which  this  present  paper  is  based. 

Now,  what  is  called  the  scienific  method  is  the 
method  of  ignoring  individualities;  and,  like  many 
mathematical  conventions,  its  great  practical  con- 
venience is  no  proof  whatever  of  its  final  truth.  Let 
me  admit  the  enormous  value,  the  wonder  of  its 
results  in  mechanics,  in  all  the  physical  sciences,  in 

230 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

chemistry,  even  in  physiology — but  what  is  its  value 
beyond  that?  Is  the  scientific  method  of  value  in 
biology?  The  great  advances  made  by  Darwin  and 
his  school  in  biology  were  not  made,  it  must  be 
remembered,  by  the  scientific  method,  as  it  is  gener- 
ally conceived,  at  all.  He  conducted  a  research  into 
pre-documentary  history.  He  collected  information 
along  the  lines  indicated  by  certain  interrogations; 
and  the  bulk  of  his  work  was  the  digesting  and 
critical  analysis  of  that.  For  documents  and  monu- 
ments he  had  fossils  and  anatomical  structures  and 
germinating  eggs  too  innocent  to  lie,  and  so  far- he 
was  nearer  simplicity.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
had  to  correspond  with  breeders  and  travellers  of 
various  sorts,  classes  entirely  analogous,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  evidence,  to  the  writers  of  history 
and  memoirs.  I  question  profoundly  whether  the 
word  "science,"  in  current  usage  anyhow,  ever 
means  such  patient  disentanglement  as  Darwin 
pursued.  It  means  the  attainment  of  something 
positive  and  emphatic  in  the  way  of  a  conclusion, 
based  on  amply  repeated  experiments  capable  of 
infinite  repetition,  "proved,"  as  they  say,  "up  to 
the  hilt." 

It  would  be,  of  course,  possible  to  dispute  whether 
the  word  "science"  should  convey  this  quality  of 
certitude;  but,  to  most  people,  it  certainly  does  at 
the  present  time.  So  far  as  the  movements  of 
comets  and  electric  trams  go,  there  is,  no  doubt, 
practically  cock-sure  science;  and  indisputably  Comte 

231 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  Herbert  Spencer  believed  that  cock-sure  could 
be  extended  to  every  conceivable  finite  thing.  The 
fact  that  Herbert  Spencer  called  a  certain  doctrine 
Individualism  reflects  nothing  on  the  non-indi- 
vidualising quality  of  his  primary  assumptions  and 
of  his  mental  texture.  He  believed  that  individuality 
(heterogeneity)  was  and  is  an  evolutionary  product 
from  an  original  homogeneity.  It  seems  to  me  that 
the  general  usage  is  entirely  for  the  limitation  of  the 
use  of  the  word  "science"  to  knowledge,  and  the 
search  after  knowledge,  of  a  high  degree  of  precision. 
And  not  simply  the  general  usage;  "Science  is  meas- 
urement," Science  is  "organised  commonsense," 
proud,  in  fact,  of  its  essential  error,  scornful  of  any 
metaphysical  analysis  of  its  terms. 

If  we  quite  boldly  face  the  fact  that  hard  positive 
methods  are  less  and  less  successful  just  in  propor- 
tion as  our  "ologies  "  deal  with  larger  and  less  numer- 
ous individuals;  if  we  admit  that  we  become  less 
"scientific"  as  we  ascend  the  scale  of  the  sciences, 
and  that  we  do  and  must  change  our  method,  then, 
it  is  humbly  submitted,  we  shall  be  in  a  much  better 
position  to  consider  the  question  of  "approaching" 
sociology.  We  shall  realise  that  all  this  talk  of  the 
organisation  of  sociology,  as  though  presently  the 
sociologist  would  be  going  about  the  world  with  the 
authority  of  a  sanitary  engineer,  is  and  will  remain 
nonsense. 

In  one  respect  we  shall  still  be  in  accordance  with 
the  Positivist  map  of  the  field  of  human  knowledge; 

232 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

with  us  as  with  that,  sociology  stands  at  the  extreme 
end  of  the  scale  from  the  molecular  sciences.  In 
these  latter  there  is  an  infinitude  of  units;  in  soci- 
ology, as  Comte  perceived,  there  is  only  one  unit. 
It  is  true  that  Herbert  Spencer,  in  order  to  get  classi- 
fication somehow,  did,  as  Professor  Durkheim  has 
pointed  out,  separate  human  society  into  societies, 
and  made  believe  they  competed  one  with  another 
and  died  and  reproduced  just  like  animals,  and  that 
economists,  following  List,  have  for  the  purposes  of 
fiscal  controversy  discovered  economic  types;  but 
this  is  a  transparent  device,  and  one  is  surprised  to 
find  thoughtful  and  reputable  writers  off  their  guard 
against  such  bad  analogy.  But,  indeed,  it  is  im- 
possible to  isolate  complete  communities  of  men,  or 
to  trace  any  but  rude  general  resemblances  between 
group  and  group.  These  alleged  units  have  as  much 
individuality  as  pieces  of  cloud;  they  come,  they  go, 
they  fuse  and  separate.  And  we  are  forced  to  con- 
clude that  not  only  is  the  method  of  observation, 
experiment,  and  verification  left  far  away  down  the 
scale,  but  that  the  method  of  classification  under 
types,  which  has  served  so  useful  a  purpose  in  the 
middle  group  of  subjects,  the  subjects  involving 
numerous  but  a  finite  number  of  units,  has  also  to 
be  abandoned  here.  We  cannot  put  Humanity  into 
a  museum,  or  dry  it  for  examination;  our  one  single, 
still  living  specimen  is  all  history,  all  anthropology, 
and  the  fluctuating  world  of  men.  There  is  no  satis- 
factory means  of  dividing  it,  and  nothing  else  in  the 

233 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

real  world  with  which  to  compare  it.  We  have  only 
the  remotest  ideas  of  its  "life-cycle"  and  a  few  relics 
of  its  origin  and  dreams  of  its  destiny.  .  .  . 

Sociology,  it  is  evident,  is,  upon  any  hypothesis, 
no  less  than  the  attempt  to  bring  that  vast,  complex, 
unique  Being,  its  subject,  into  clear,  true  relations 
with  the  individual  intelligence.  Now,  since  indi- 
vidual intelligences  are  individual,  and  each  is  a 
little  differently  placed  in  regard  to  the  subject 
under  consideration,  since  the  personal  angle  of 
vision  is  much  wider  towards  humanity  than  towards 
the  circumambient  horizon  of  matter,  it  should  be 
manifest  that  no  sociology  of  universal  compulsion, 
of  anything  approaching  the  general  validity  of  the 
physical  sciences,  is  ever  to  be  hoped  for — at  least 
upon  the  metaphysical  assumptions  of  this  paper. 
With  that  conceded,  we  may  go  on  to  consider  the 
more  hopeful  ways  in  which  that  great  Being  may 
be  presented  in  a  comprehensible  manner.  Essen- 
tially this  presentation  must  involve  an  element  of 
self-expression,  must  partake  quite  as  much  of  the 
nature  of  art  as  of  science.  One  finds  in  the  first 
conference  of  the  Sociological  Society,  Professor 
Stein,  speaking,  indeed,  a  very  different  philosophical 
dialect  from  mine,  but  coming  to  the  same  practical 
conclusion  in  the  matter,  and  Mr.  Osman  Newland 
counting  "evolving  ideals  for  the  future"  as  part  of 
the  sociologist's  work.  Mr.  Alfred  Fouillee  also 
moves  very  interestingly  in  the  region  of  this  same 
idea;  he  concedes  an  essential  difference  between 

234 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

sociology  and  all  other  sciences  in  the  fact  of  a 
"certain  kind  of  liberty  belonging  to  society  in  the 
exercise  of  its  higher  functions."  He  says  further: 
"If  this  view  be  correct,  it  will  not  do  for  us  to  follow 
in  the  steps  of  Comte  and  Spencer,  and  transfer, 
bodily  and  ready-made,  the  conceptions  and  the 
methods  of  the  natural  sciences  into  the  science  of 
society.  For  here  the  fact  of  consciousness  entails 
a  reaction  of  the  whole  assemblage  of  social  phe- 
nomena upon  themselves,  such  as  the  natural  sciences 
have  no  example  of. ' '  And  he  concludes : ' '  Sociology 
ought,  therefore,  to  guard  carefully  against  the  ten- 
dency to  crystallise  that  which  is  essentially  fluid  and 
moving,  the  tendency  to  consider  as  given  fact  or 
dead  data  that  which  creates  itself  and  gives  itself 
into  the  world  of  phenomena  continually  by  force  of 
its  own  ideal  conception."  These  opinions  do,  in 
their  various  keys,  sound  a  similar  motif  to  mine. 
If,  indeed,  the  tendency  of  these  remarks  is  justifiable, 
then  unavoidably  the  subjective  element,  which  is 
beauty,  must  coalesce  with  the  objective,  which  is 
truth;  and  sociology  must  be  neither  art  simply,  nor 
science  in  the  narrow  meaning  of  the  word  at  all,  but 
knowledge  rendered  imaginatively,  and  with  an 
element  of  personality ;  that  is  to  say,  in  the  highest 
sense  of  the  term,  literature. 

If  this  contention  is  sound,  if  therefore  we  boldly 
set  aside  Comte  and  Spencer  altogether,  as  pseudo- 
scientific  interlopers  rather  than  the  authoritative 
parents  of  sociology,  we  shall  have  to  substitute  for 

235 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  classifications  of  the  social  sciences  an  inquiry 
into  the  chief  literary  forms  that  subserve  sociological 
purposes.  Of  these  there  are  two,  one  invariably 
recognised  as  valuable,  and  one  which,  I  think,  under 
the  matter-of-fact  scientific  obsession,  is  altogether 
underrated  and  neglected.  The  first,  which  is  the 
social  side  of  history,  makes  up  the  bulk  of  valid 
sociological  work  at  the  present  time.  Of  history 
there  is  the  purely  descriptive  part,  the  detailed 
account  of  past  or  contemporary  social  conditions, 
or  of  the  sequence  of  such  conditions;  and,  in  addi- 
tion, there  is  the  sort  of  historical  literature  that 
seeks  to  elucidate  and  impose  general  interpretations 
upon  the  complex  of  occurrences  and  institutions,  to 
establish  broad  historical  generalisations,  to  elimi- 
nate the  mass  of  irrelevant  incident,  to  present  some 
great  period  of  history,  or  all  history,  in  the  light 
of  one  dramatic  sequence,  or  as  one  process.  This 
Dr.  Beattie  Crozier,  for  example,  attempts  in 
his  History  of  Intellectual  Development.  Equally 
comprehensive  is  Buckle's  History  of  Civilisation. 
Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals,  during  the 
onset  of  Christianity  again,  is  essentially  sociology. 
Numerous  works  —  Atkinson's  Primal  Law, 1  for 
example — are,  as  it  were,  fragments  to  the  same 
purport.  In  the  great  design  of  Gibbon's  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  or  Carlyle's  French 
Revolution,  you  have  a  greater  insistence  upon  the 

1  Social  Origins, by  Andrew  Lang;    Primal  Law,  by  J.  J.  Atkin- 
son.   (Longmans). 

236 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

dramatic  and  picturesque  elements  in  history,  but 
in  other  respects  an  altogether  kindred  endeavour  to 
impose  upon  the  vast  confusions  of  the  past  a  scheme 
of  interpretation,  valuable  just  to  the  extent  of  its 
literary  value,  of  the  success  with  which  the  dis- 
crepant masses  have  been  fused  and  cast  into  the 
shape  the  insight  of  the  writer  has  determined.  The 
writing  of  great  history  is  entirely  analogous  to  fine 
portraiture,  in  which  fact  is  indeed  material,  but 
material  entirely  subordinate  to  vision.  One  main 
branch  of  the  work  of  a  Sociological  Society  therefore 
should  surely  be  to  accept  and  render  acceptable,  to 
provide  understanding,  criticism,  and  stimulus  for 
such  literary  activities  as  restore  the  dead  bones  of 
the  past  to  a  living  participation  in  our  lives. 

But  it  is  in  the  second  and  at  present  neglected 
direction  that  I  believe  the  predominant  attack  upon 
the  problem  implied  by  the  word  "sociology"  must 
lie;  the  attack  that  must  be  finally  driven  home. 
There  is  no  such  thing  in  sociology  as  dispassionately 
considering  what  is,  without  considering  what  is 
intended  to  be.  In  sociology,  beyond  any  possibility 
of  evasion,  ideas  are  facts.  The  history  of  civilisa- 
tion is  really  the  history  of  the  appearance  and  re- 
appearance, the  tentatives  and  hesitations  and  alter- 
ations, the  manifestations  and  reflections  in  this 
mind  and  that,  of  a  very  complex,  imperfect,  elusive 
idea,  the  Social  Idea.  It  is  that  idea  struggling  to 
exist  and  realise  itself  in  a  world  of  egotisms,  animal- 
isms, and  brute  matter.  Now  I  submit  it  is  not  only 

237 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

a  legitimate  form  of  approach,  but  altogether  the 
most  promising  and  hopeful  form  of  approach,  to 
endeavour  to  disentangle  and  express  one's  personal 
version  of  that  idea,  and  to  measure  realities  from 
the  standpoint  of  that  idealisation.  I  think,  in  fact, 
that  the  creation  of  Utopias — and  their  exhaustive 
criticism — is  the  proper  and  distinctive  method  of 
sociology. 

Suppose  now  the  Sociological  Society,  or  some  con- 
siderable proportion  of  it,  were  to  adopt  this  view, 
that  sociology  is  the  description  of  the  Ideal  Society 
and  its  relation  to  existing  societies,  would  not  this 
give  the  synthetic  framework  Professor  Durkheim, 
for  example,  has  said  to  be  needed? 

Almost  all  the  sociological  literature  beyond  the 
province  of  history  that  has  stood  the  test  of  time 
and  established  itself  in  the  esteem  of  men  is  frankly 
Utopian.  Plato,  when  his  mind  turned  to  schemes 
of  social  reconstruction,  thrust  his  habitual  form 
of  dialogue  into  a  corner;  both  the  Republic  and 
the  Laws  are  practically  Utopias  in  monologue;  and 
Aristotle  found  the  criticism  of  the  Utopian  sugges- 
tions of  his  predecessors  richly  profitable.  Directly 
the  mind  of  the  world  emerged  again  at  the  Renas- 
cence from  intellectual  barbarism  in  the  brief  breath- 
ing time  before  Sturm  and  the  schoolmasters  caught 
it  and  birched  it  into  scholarship  and  a  new  period 
of  sterility,  it  went  on  from  Plato  to  the  making 
of  fresh  Utopias.  Not  without  profit  did  More  dis- 
cuss pauperism  in  this  form  and  Bacon  the  organisa- 

238 


THE  SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

tion  of  research;  and  the  yeast  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution was  Utopias.  Even  Comte,  all  the  while  that 
he  is  professing  science,  fact,  precision,  is  adding 
detail  after  detail  to  the  intensely  personal  Utopia 
of  a  Western  Republic  that  constitutes  his  one 
meritorious  gift  to  the  world.  Sociologists  cannot 
help  making  Utopias;  though  they  avoid  the  word, 
though  they  deny  the  idea  with  passion,  their  very 
silences  shape  a  Utopia.  Why  should  they  not 
follow  the  precedent  of  Aristotle,  and  accept  Utopias 
as  material  ? 

There  used  to  be  in  my  student  days,  and  probably 
still  flourishes,  a  most  valuable  summary  of  fact  and 
theory  in  comparative  anatomy,  called  Rolleston's 
Forms  of  Animal  Life.  I  figure  to  myself  a  similar 
book,  a  sort  of  dream  book  of  huge  dimensions,  in 
reality  perhaps  dispersed  in  many  volumes  by  many 
hands,  upon  the  Ideal  Society.  This  book,  this  pic- 
ture of  the  perfect  state,  would  be  the  backbone  of 
sociology.  It  would  have  great  sections  devoted  to 
such  questions  as  the  extent  of  the  Ideal  Society,  its 
relation  to  racial  differences,  the  relations  of  the 
sexes  in  it,  its  economic  organisations,  its  organisa- 
tion for  thought  and  education,  its  "Bible" — as  Dr. 
Beattie  Crozier  would  say — its  housing  and  social 
atmosphere,  and  so  forth.  Almost  all  the  divari- 
cating work  at  present  roughly  classed  together  as 
sociological  could  be  brought  into  relation  in  the 
simplest  manner,  either  as  new  suggestions,  as  new 
discussion  or  criticism,  as  newly  ascertained  facts 

239 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

bearing  upon  such  discussions  and  sustaining  or 
eliminating  suggestions.  The  institutions  of  exist- 
ing states  would  come  into  comparison  with  the  insti- 
tutions of  the  Ideal  State,  their  failures  and  defects 
would  be  criticised  most  effectually  in  that  relation, 
and  the  whole  science  of  collective  psychology,  the 
psychology  of  human  association,  would  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  the  question  of  the  practicability  of  this 
proposed  ideal. 

This  method  would  give  not  only  a  boundary  shape 
to  all  sociological  activities,  but  a  scheme  of  arrange- 
ment for  text  books  and  lectures,  and  points  of  direc- 
tion and  reference  for  the  graduation  and  post- 
graduate work  of  sociological  students. 

Only  one  group  of  inquiries  commonly  classed  as 
sociological  would  have  to  be  left  out  of  direct  re- 
lationship with  this  Ideal  State ;  and  that  is  inquiries 
concerning  the  rough  expedients  to  meet  the  failure 
of  imperfect  institutions.  Social  emergency  work  of 
all  sorts  comes  under  this  head.  What  to  do  with 
the  pariah  dogs  of  Constantinople,  what  to  do  with 
the  tramps  who  sleep  in  the  London  parks,  how  to 
organise  a  soup  kitchen  or  a  Bible  coffee  van,  how  to 
prevent  ignorant  people,  who  have  nothing  else  to 
do,  getting  drunk  in  beer-houses,  are  no  doubt  serious 
questions  for  the  practical  administrator,  questions 
of  primary  importance  to  the  politician;  but  they 
have  no  more  to  do  with  sociology  than  the  erection 
of  a  temporary  hospital  after  the  collision  of  two 
trains  has  to  do  with  railway  engineering. 

240 


THE   SO-CALLED  SCIENCE  OF  SOCIOLOGY 

So  much  for  my  second  and  most  central  and 
essential  portion  of  sociological  work.  It  should  be 
evident  that  the  former  part,  the  historical  part, 
which  conceivably  will  be  much  the  bulkier  and  more 
abundant  of  the  two,  will  in  effect  amount  to  a 
history  of  the  suggestions  in  circumstance  and  ex- 
perience of  that  Idea  of  Society  of  which  the  second 
will  consist,  and  of  the  instructive  failures  in  attempt- 
ing its  incomplete  realisation. 


DIVORCE 

THE  time  is  fast  approaching  when  it  will  be 
necessary  for  the  general  citizen  to  form  definite 
opinions  upon  proposals  for  probably  quite  extensive 
alterations  of  our  present  divorce  laws,  arising  out 
of  the  recommendations  of  the  recent  Royal  Com- 
mission on  the  subject.  It  may  not  be  out  of  place, 
therefore,  to  run  through  some  of  the  chief  points 
that  are  likely  to  be  raised,  and  to  set  out  the  main 
considerations  affecting  these  issues. 

Divorce  is  not  one  of  those  things  that  stand  alone, 
and  neither  divorce  law  nor  the  general  principles  of 
divorce  are  to  be  discussed  without  a  reference  to 
antecedent  arrangements.  Divorce  is  a  sequel  to 
marriage,  and  a  change  in  the  divorce  law  is  essen- 
tially a  change  in  the  marriage  law.  There  was  a 
time  in  this  country  when  our  marriage  was  a  practi- 
cally divorceless  bond,  soluble  only  under  extra- 
ordinary circumstances  by  people  in  situations  of 
exceptional  advantage  for  doing  so.  Now  it  is  a 
bond  under  conditions,  and  in  the  event  of  the 
adultery  of  the  wife,  or  of  the  adultery  plus  cruelty 
or  plus  desertion  of  the  husband,  and  of  one  or  two 
other  rarer  and  more  dreadful  offences,  it  can  be 

242 


DIVORCE 

broken  at  the  instance  of  the  aggrieved  party.  A 
change  in  the  divorce  law  is  a  change  in  the  dissolu- 
tion clauses,  so  to  speak,  of  the  contract  for  the 
marriage  partnership.  It  is  a  change  in  the  marriage 
law. 

A  great  number  of  people  object  to  divorce  under 
any  circumstances  whatever.  This  is  the  case  with 
the  orthodox  Catholic  and  with  the  orthodox  Posi- 
tivist.  And  many  religious  and  orthodox  people 
carry  their  assertion  of  the  indissolubility  of  marriage 
to  the  grave;  they  demand  that  the  widow  or 
widower  shall  remain  unmarried,  faithful  to  the  vows 
made  at  the  altar  until  death  comes  to  the  release  of 
the  lonely  survivor  also.  Remarriage  is  regarded  by 
such  people  as  a  posthumous  bigamy.  There  is 
certainly  a  very  strong  and  logical  case  to  be  made 
out  for  a  marriage  bond  that  is  indissoluble  even  by 
death.  It  banishes  step-parents  from  the  world. 
It  confers  a  dignity  of  tragic  inevitability  upon  the 
association  of  husband  and  wife,  and  makes  a  love 
approach  the  gravest,  most  momentous  thing  in  life. 
It  banishes  for  ever  any  dream  of  escape  from  the 
presence  and  service  of  either  party,  or  of  any  sepa- 
ration from  the  children  of  the  union.  It  affords  no 
alternative  to  "making  the  best  of  it"  for  either  hus- 
band or  wife;  they  have  taken  a  step  as  irrevocable 
as  suicide.  And  some  logical  minds  would  even  go 
further,  and  have  no  law  as  between  the  members  of 
a  family,  no  rights,  no  private  property  within  that 
limit.  The  family  would  be  the  social  unit  and  the 

243 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

father  its  public  representative,  and  though  the  law 
might  intervene  if  he  murdered  or  ill-used  wife  or 
children,  or  they  him,  it  would  do  so  in  just  the  same 
spirit  that  it  might  prevent  him  from  self -mutilation 
or  attempted  suicide,  for  the  good  of  the  State  simply, 
and  not  to  defend  any  supposed  independence  of  the 
injured  member.  There  is  much,  I  assert,  to  be 
said  for  such  a  complete  shutting  up  of  the  family 
from  the  interference  of  the  law,  and  not  the  least 
among  these  reasons  is  the  entire  harmony  of  such 
a  view  with  the  passionate  instincts  of  the  natural 
man  and  woman  in  these  matters.  All  unsophisti- 
cated human  beings  appear  disposed  to  a  fierce  pro- 
prietorship in  their  children  and  their  sexual  partners, 
and  in  no  respect  is  the  ordinary  mortal  so  easily 
induced  to  vehemence  and  violence. 

For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  think  the  maintenance 
of  a  marriage  that  is  indissoluble,  that  precludes  the 
survivor  from  remarriage,  that  gives  neither  party 
an  external  refuge  from  the  misbehaviour  of  the 
other,  and  makes  the  children  the  absolute  property 
of  their  parents  until  they  grow  up,  would  cause  any 
very  general  unhappiness.  Most  people  are  reason- 
able enough,  good-tempered  enough,  and  adaptable 
enough  to  shake  down  even  in  a  grip  so  rigid,  and  I 
would  even  go  further  and  say  that  its  very  rigidity, 
the  entire  absence  of  any  way  out  at  all,  would  oblige 
innumerable  people  to  accommodate  themselves  to 
its  conditions  and  make  a  working  success  of  unions 
that,  under  laxer  conditions,  would  be  almost  cer- 

244 


DIVORCE 

tainly  dissolved.  We  should  have  more  people  of 
what  I  may  call  the  "broken-in"  type  than  an  easier 
release  would  create,  but  to  many  thinkers  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  human  being  thoroughly  "broken-in"  is 
in  itself  extremely  satisfactory.  A  few  more  crimes 
of  desperation  perhaps  might  occur,  to  balance 
against  an  almost  universal  effort  to  achieve  content- 
ment and  reconciliation.  We  should  hear  more  of 
the  "natural  law"  permitting  murder  by  the  jealous 
husband  or  by  the  jealous  wife,  and  the  traffic  in 
poisons  would  need  a  sedulous  attention — but  even 
there  the  impossibility  of  remarriage  would  operate 
to  restrain  the  impatient.  On  the  whole,  I  can 
imagine  the  world  rubbing  along  very  well  with 
marriage  as  unaccommodating  as  a  perfected  steel 
trap.  Exceptional  people  might  suffer  or  sin  wildly 
— to  the  general  amusement  or  indignation. 

But  when  once  we  part  from  the  idea  of  such  a 
rigid  and  eternal  marriage  bond — and  the  law  of  every 
civilised  country  and  the  general  thought  and  senti- 
ment everywhere  have  long  since  done  so — then  the 
whole  question  changes.  If  marriage  is  not  so  abso- 
lutely sacred  a  bond,  if  it  is  not  an  eternal  bond,  but 
a  bond  we  may  break  on  this  account  or  that,  then  at 
once  we  put  the  question  on  a  different  footing.  If 
we  may  terminate  it  for  adultery  or  cruelty,  or  any 
cause  whatever,  if  we  may  suspend  the  intimacy  of 
husband  and  wife  by  separation  orders  and  the  like, 
if  we  recognise  their  separate  property  and  inter- 
fere between  them  and  their  children  to  ensure  the 
17  245 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

health  and  education  of  the  latter,  then  we  open  at 
once  the  whole  question  of  a  terminating  agreement. 
Marriage  ceases  to  be  an  unlimited  union  and  be- 
comes a  definite  contract.  We  raise  the  whole 
question  of  "What  are  the  limits  in  marriage,  and 
how  and  when  may  a  marriage  terminate?" 

Now,  many  answers  are  being  given  to  that  ques- 
tion at  the  present  time.  We  may  take  as  the 
extremest  opposite  to  the  eternal  marriage  idea  the 
proposal  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  that  marriage  should 
be  terminable  at  the  instance  of  either  party.  You 
would  give  due  and  public  notice  that  your  marriage 
was  at  an  end,  and  it  would  be  at  an  end.  This  is 
marriage  at  its  minimum,  as  the  eternal  indissoluble 
marriage  is  marriage  at  its  maximum,  and  the  only 
conceivable  next  step  would  be  to  have  a  marriage 
makeable  by  the  oral  declaration  of  both  parties  and 
terminable  by  the  oral  declaration  of  either,  which 
would  be,  indeed,  no  marriage  at  all,  but  an  en- 
counter. You  might  marry  a  dozen  times  in  that 
way  in  a  day.  .  .  .  Somewhere  between  these  two 
extremes  lies  the  marriage  law  of  a  civilised  state. 
Let  us,  rather  than  working  down  from  the  eternal 
marriage  of  the  religious  idealists,  work  up  from 
Mr.  Shaw.  The  former  course  is,  perhaps,  inevitable 
for  the  legislator,  but  the  latter  is  much  more  con- 
venient for  our  discussion. 

Now,  the  idea  of  a  divorce  so  easy  and  wilful  as 
Mr.  Shaw  proposes  arises  naturally  out  of  an  ex- 
clusive consideration  of  what  I  may  call  the  amorous 

246 


DIVORCE 

sentimentalities  of  marriage.  If  you  regard  marriage 
as  merely  the  union  of  two  people  in  love,  then, 
clearly,  it  is  intolerable,  an  outrage  upon  human 
dignity,  that  they  should  remain  intimately  united 
when  either  ceases  to  love.  And  in  that  world  of 
Mr.  Shaw's  dreams,  in  which  everybody  is  to  have 
an  equal  income,  and  nobody  is  to  have  children,  in 
that  culminating  conversazione  of  humanity,  his 
marriage  law  will,  no  doubt,  work  with  the  most 
admirable  results.  But  if  we  make  a  step  towards 
reality  and  consider  a  world  in  which  incomes  are 
unequal,  and  economic  difficulties  abound — for  the 
present  we  will  ignore  the  complication  of  offspring — 
we  at  once  find  it  necessary  to  modify  the  first  fine 
simplicity  of  divorce  at  either  partner's  request. 
Marriage  is  almost  always  a  serious  economic  dis- 
turbance for  both  man  and  woman:  work  has  to  be 
given  up  and  rearranged,  resources  have  to  be  pooled; 
only  in  the  rarest  cases  does  it  escape  becoming  an 
indefinite  business  partnership.  Accordingly,  the 
withdrawal  of  one  partner  raises  at  once  all  sorts  of 
questions  of  financial  adjustment,  compensation  for 
physical,  mental,  and  moral  damage,  division  of 
furniture  and  effects  and  so  forth.  No  doubt  a  very 
large  part  of  this  could  be  met  if  there  existed  some 
sort  of  marriage  settlement  providing  for  the  disso- 
lution of  the  partnership.  Otherwise  the  petitioner 
for  a  Shaw-esque  divorce  must  be  prepared  for  the 
most  exhaustive  and  penetrating  examination  before, 
say,  a  court  of  three  assessors — representing  severally 

247 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  husband,  the  wife,  and  justice — to  determine 
the  distribution  of  the  separation.  This  point,  how- 
ever, leads  me  to  note  in  passing  the  need  that  does 
exist  even  to-day  for  a  more  precise  business  supple- 
ment to  marriage  as  we  know  it  in  England  and 
America.  I  think  there  ought  to  be  a  very  definite 
and  elaborate  treaty  of  partnership  drawn  up  by  an 
impartial  private  tribunal  for  every  couple  that 
marries,  providing  for  most  of  the  eventualities  of 
life,  taking  cognizance  of  the  earning  power,  the 
property  and  prospects  of  either  party,  insisting  upon 
due  insurances,  ensuring  private  incomes  for  each 
partner,  securing  the  welfare  of  the  children,  and 
laying  down  equitable  conditions  in  the  event  of  a 
divorce  or  separation.  Such  a  treaty  ought  to  be  a 
necessary  prelude  to  the  issue  of  a  licence  to  marry. 
And  given  such  a  basis  to  go  upon,  then  I  see  no 
reason  why,  in  the  case  of  couples  who  remain  child- 
less for  five  or  six  years,  let  us  say,  and  seem  likely 
to  remain  childless,  the  Shaw-esque  divorce  at  the 
instance  of  either  party,  without  reason  assigned, 
should  not  be  a  very  excellent  thing  indeed. 

And  I  take  up  this  position  because  I  believe  in 
the  family  as  the  justification  of  marriage.  Marriage 
to  me  is  no  mystical  and  eternal  union,  but  a  practical 
affair,  to  be  judged  as  all  practical  things  are  judged 
— by  its  returns  in  happiness  and  human  welfare. 
And  directly  we  pass  from  the  mists  and  glamours 
of  amorous  passion  to  the  warm  realities  of  the 
nursery,  we  pass  into  a  new  system  of  considerations 

248 


DIVORCE 

altogether.  We  are  no  longer  considering  A.  in 
relation  to  Mrs.  A.,  but  A.  and  Mrs.  A.  in  relation 
to  an  indefinite  number  of  little  A.'s,  who  are  the 
very  life  of  the  State  in  which  they  live.  Into  the 
case  of  Mr.  A.  v.  Mrs.  A.  come  Master  A.  and  Miss  A. 
intervening.  They  have  the  strongest  claim  against 
both  their  parents  for  love,  shelter  and  upbringing, 
and  the  legislator  and  statesman,  concerned  as  he  is 
chiefly  with  the  future  of  the  community,  have  the 
strongest  reasons  for  seeing  that  they  get  these 
things,  even  at  the  price  of  considerable  vexation, 
boredom  or  indignity  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  A.  And 
here  it  is  that  there  arises  the  rational  case  against 
free  and  frequent  divorce  and  the  general  unsettls- 
ment  and  fluctuation  of  homes  that  would  ensue. 

At  this  point  we  come  to  the  verge  of  a  jungle  of 
questions  that  would  demand  a  whole  book  for  any- 
thing like  a  complete  answer.  Let  us  try  as  swiftly 
and  simply  as  possible  to  form  a  general  idea  at  least 
of  the  way  through.  Remember  that  we  are  working 
upward  from  Mr.  Shaw's  question  of  "Why  not  sepa- 
rate at  the  choice  of  either  party?"  We  have  got 
thus  far,  that  no  two  people  who  do  not  love  each 
other  should  be  compelled  to  live  together,  except 
where  the  welfare  of  their  children  comes  in  to 
override  their  desire  to  separate,  and  now  we  have 
to  consider  what  may  or  may  not  be  for  the  welfare 
of  the  children.  Mr.  Shaw,  following  the  late 
Samuel  Butler,  meets  this  difficulty  by  the  most 
extravagant  abuse  of  parents.  He  would  have  us 

249 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

believe  that  the  worst  enemies  a  child  can  have  are 
its  mother  and  father,  and  that  the  only  civilised 
path  to  citizenship  is  by  the  incubator,  the  cre"che, 
and  the  mixed  school  and  college.  In  these  matters 
he  is  not  only  ignorant,  but  unfeeling  and  unsympa- 
thetic, extraordinarily  so  in  view  of  his  great  capacity 
for  pity  and  sweetness  in  other  directions  and  of  his 
indignant  hatred  of  cruelty  and  unfairness,  and  it  is 
not  necessary  to  waste  time  in  discussing  what  the 
common  experience  confutes.  Neither  is  it  neces- 
sary to  fly  to  the  other  extreme,  and  indulge  in  pre- 
posterous sentimentalities  about  the  magic  of  father- 
hood and  a  mother's  love.  These  are  not  magic  and 
unlimited  things,  but  touchingly  qualified  and  hu- 
man things.  The  temperate  truth  of  the  matter  is 
that  in  most  parents  there  are  great  stores  of  pride, 
interest,  natural  sympathy,  passionate  love  and  de- 
votion which  can  be  tapped  in  the  interests  of  the 
children  and  the  social  future,  and  that  it  is  the 
mere  commonsense  of  statecraft  to  use  their  resources 
to  the  utmost.  It  does  not  follow  that  every  parent 
contains  these  reservoirs,  and  that  a  continual  close 
association  with  the  parents  is  always  beneficial  to 
children.  If  it  did,  we  should  have  to  prosecute 
everyone  who  employed  a  governess  or  sent  away  a 
little  boy  to  a  preparatory  school.  And  our  real  task 
is  to  establish  a  test  that  will  gauge  the  desirability 
and  benefit  of  a  parent's  continued  parentage. 
There  are  certainly  parents  and  homes  from  which 
the  children  might  be  taken  with  infinite  benefit  to 

250 


DIVORCE 

themselves  and  to  society,  and  whose  union  it  is 
ridiculous  to  save  from  the  divorce-court  shears. 

Suppose,  now,  we  made  the  willingness  of  a  parent 
to  give  up  his  or  her  children  the  measure  of  his 
beneficialness  to  them.  There  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  restrict  divorce  only  to  the  relation  of 
husband  and  wife.  Let  us  broaden  the  word  and 
make  it  conceivable  for  a  husband  or  wife  to  divorce 
not  only  the  partner,  but  the  children.  Then  it 
might  be  possible  to  meet  the  demands  of  the 
Shaw-esque  extremist  up  to  the  point  of  permitting 
a  married  parent,  who  desired  freedom,  to  petition 
for  a  divorce,  not  from  his  or  her  partner  simply,  but 
from  his  or  her  family,  and  even  for  a  widow  or 
widower  to  divorce  a  family.  Then  would  come  the 
task  of  the  assessors.  They  would  make  arrange- 
ments for  the  dissolution  of  the  relationship,  erring 
from  justice  rather  in  the  direction  of  liberality 
towards  the  divorced  group,  they  would  determine 
contributions,  exact  securities,  appoint  trustees  and 
guardians.  .  .  .  On  the  whole,  I  do  not  see  why 
such  a  system  should  not  work  very  well.  It  would 
break  up  many  loveless  homes,  quarrelling  and  bick- 
ering homes,  and  give  a  safety-valve  for  that  hate 
which  is  the  sinister  shadow  of  love.  I  do  not 
think  it  would  separate  one  child  from  one  parent 
who  was  really  worthy  of  its  possession. 

So  far  I  have  discussed  only  the  possibility  of 
divorce  without  offences,  the  sort  of  divorce  that 
arises  out  of  estrangement  and  incompatibilities. 

251 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

But  divorce,  as  it  is  known  in  most  Christian  coun- 
tries, has  a  punitive  element,  and  is  obtained  through 
the  failure  of  one  of  the  parties  to  observe  the  con- 
ditions of  the  bond  and  the  determination  of  the  other 
to  exact  suffering.  Divorce  as  it  exists  at  present 
is  not  a  readjustment  but  a  revenge.  It  is  the 
nasty  exposure  of  a  private  wrong.  In  England  a 
husband  may  divorce  his  wife  for  a  single  act  of 
infidelity,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  we  are 
on  the  eve  of  an  equalisation  of  the  law  in  this 
respect.  I  will  confess  I  consider  this  an  extreme 
concession  to  the  passion  of  jealousy,  and  one  likely 
to  tear  off  the  roof  from  many  a  family  of  innocent 
children.  Only  infidelity  leading  to  supposititious 
children  in  the  case  of  the  wife,  or  infidelity  obsti- 
nately and  offensively  persisted  in  or  endangering 
health  in  the  case  of  the  husband,  really  injure  the 
home  sufficiently  to  justify  a  divorce  on  the  assump- 
tions of  our  present  argument.  If  we  are  going  to 
make  the  welfare  of  the  children  our  criterion  in  these 
matters,  then  our  divorce  law  does  in  this  direction 
already  go  too  far.  A  husband  or  wife  may  do  far 
more  injury  to  the  home  by  constantly  neglecting  it 
for  the  companionship  of  some  outside  person  with 
whom  no  "matrimonial  offence"  is  ever  committed. 
Of  course,  if  our  divorce  law  exists  mainly  for  the 
gratification  of  the  fiercer  sexual  resentments,  well 
and  good,  but  if  that  is  so,  let  us  abandon  our  pre- 
tence that  marriage  is  an  institution  for  the  estab- 
lishment and  protection  of  homes.  And  while  on 

252 


DIVORCE 

the  one  hand  existing  divorce  laws  appear  to  be 
obsessed  by  sexual  offences,  other  things  of  far  more 
evil  effect  upon  the  home  go  without  a  remedy. 
There  are,  for  example,  desertion,  domestic  neglect, 
cruelty  to  the  children,  drunkenness  or  harmful 
drug-taking,  indecency  of  living  and  uncontrollable 
extravagance.  I  cannot  conceive  how  any  logical 
mind,  having  once  admitted  the  principle  of  divorce, 
can  hesitate  at  making  these  entirely  home-wrecking 
things  the  basis  of  effective  pleas.  But  in  another 
direction,  some  strain  of  sentimentality  in  my  nature 
makes  me  hesitate  to  go  with  the  great  majority  of 
divorce -law  reformers.  I  cannot  bring  myself  to 
agree  that  either  a  long  term  of  imprisonment  or  the 
misfortune  of  insanity  should  in  itself  justify  a 
divorce.  I  admit  the  social  convenience,  but  I  wince 
at  the  thought  of  those  tragic  returns  of  the  dis- 
possessed. So  far  as  insanity  goes,  I  perceive  that 
the  cruelty  of  the  law  would  but  endorse  the  cruelty 
of  nature.  But  I  do  not  like  men  to  endorse  the 
cruelty  of  nature. 

And,  of  course,  there  is  no  decent-minded  person 
nowadays  but  wants  to  put  an  end  to  that  ugly  blot 
upon  our  civilisation,  the  publication  of  whatever  is 
most  spicy  and  painful  in  divorce-court  proceedings. 
It  is  an  outrage  which  falls  even  more  heavily  on  the 
innocent  than  on  the  guilty,  and  which  has  deterred 
hundreds  of  shy  and  delicate-minded  people  from 
seeking  legal  remedies  for  nearly  intolerable  wrongs. 
The  sort  of  person  who  goes  willingly  to  the  divorce 

253 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

court  to-day  is  the  sort  of  person  who  would  love  a 
screaming  quarrel  in  a  crowded  street.  The  emo- 
tional breach  of  the  marriage  bond  is  as  private  an 
affair  as  its  consummation,  and  it  would  be  nearly  as 
righteous  to  subject  young  couples  about  to  marry 
to  a  blustering  cross-examination  by  some  underbred 
bully  of  a  barrister  upon  their  motives,  and  then  to 
publish  whatever  chance  phrases  in  their  answers 
appeared  to  be  amusing  in  the  press,  as  it  is  to  publish 
contemporary  divorce  proceedings.  The  thing  is  a 
nastiness,  a  steam  of  social  contagion  and  an  extreme 
cruelty,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  whatever 
other  result  this  British  Royal  Commission  may  have, 
there  at  least  will  be  many  sweeping  alterations. 


THE   SCHOOLMASTER  AND   THE   EMPIRE 

§i 

//  Youth  but  Knew,  is  the  title  of  a  book  pub- 
lished some  years  ago,  but  still  with  a  quite  living 
interest,  by  "Kappa."  It  is  the  bitter  complaint  of 
a  distressed  senior  against  our  educational  system. 
He  is  hugely  disappointed  in  the  public-school  boy, 
and  more  particularly  in  one  typical  specimen.  He 
is — if  one  might  hazard  a  guess — an  uncle  bereft  of 
great  expectations.  He  finds  an  echo  in  thousands 
of  other  distressed  uncles  and  parents.  They  use  the 
most  divergent  and  inadequate  forms  of  expression 
for  this  vague  sense  that  the  result  has  not  come  out 
good  enough;  they  put  it  contradictorily  and  often 
wrongly,  but  the  sense  is  widespread  and  real  and 
justifiable,  and  we  owe  a  great  debt  to  "Kappa"  for 
an  accurate  diagnosis  of  what  in  the  aggregate 
amounts  to  a  grave  national  and  social  evil. 

The  trouble  with  "Kappa's"  particular  public- 
school  boy  is  his  unlit  imagination,  the  apathetic 
commonness  of  his  attitude  to  life  at  large.  He  is 
almost  stupidly  not  interested  in  the  mysteries  of 
material  fact,  nor  in  the  riddles  and  great  dramatic 
movements  of  history,  indifferent  to  any  form  of 

255 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

beauty,  and  pedantically  devoted  to  the  pettiness  of 
games  and  clothing  and  social  conduct.  It  is,  in 
fact,  chiefly  by  his  style  in  these  latter  things,  his 
extensive  unilluminated  knowledge  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  and  his  greater  costliness,  that  he  differs  from 
a  young  carpenter  or  clerk.  A  young  carpenter  or 
clerk  of  the  same  temperament  would  have  no 
narrower  prejudices  nor  outlook,  no  less  capacity  for 
the  discussion  of  broad  questions  and  for  imaginative 
thinking.  And  it  has  come  to  the  mind  of  ' '  Kappa  " 
as  a  discovery,  as  an  exceedingly  remarkable  and 
moving  thing,  a  thing  to  cry  aloud  about,  that  this 
should  be  so,  that  this  is  all  that  the  best  possible 
modern  education  has  achieved.  He  makes  it  more 
than  a  personal  issue.  He  has  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  this  is  not  an  exceptional  case  at  all, 
but  a  fair  sample  of  what  our  upper-class  education 
does  for  the  imagination  of  those  who  must  pres- 
ently take  the  lead  among  us.  He  declares  plainly 
that  we  are  raising  a  generation  of  rulers  and  of  those 
with  whom  the  duty  of  initiative  should  chiefly  reside, 
who  have  minds  atrophied  by  dull  studies  and  dead- 
ening suggestions,  and  he  thinks  that  this  is  a  matter 
of  the  gravest  concern  for  the  future  of  this  land 
and  Empire.  It  is  difficult  to  avoid  agreeing  with 
him  either  in  his  observation  or  in  his  conclusion. 
Anyone  who  has  seen  much  of  undergraduates,  or 
medical  students,  or  Army  candidates,  and  also  of 
their  social  subordinates,  must  be  disposed  to  agree 
that  the  difference  between  the  two  classes  is  mainly 

256 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

in  unimportant  things — in  polish,  in  manner,  in 
superficialities  of  accent  and  vocabulary  and  social 
habit — and  that  their  minds,  in  range  and  power, 
are  very  much  on  a  level.  With  an  invincibly 
aristocratic  tradition  we  are  failing  altogether  to 
produce  a  leader  class  adequate  to  modern  needs. 
The  State  is  light-headed. 

But  while  one  agrees  with  " Kappa"  and  shares  his 
alarm,  one  must  confess  the  remedies  he  considers 
indicated  do  not  seem  quite  so  satisfactory  as  his 
diagnosis  of  the  disease.  He  attacks  the  curriculum 
and  tells  us  we  must  reduce  or  revolutionise  instruc- 
tion and  exercise  in  the  dead  languages,  introduce  a 
broader  handling  of  history,  a  more  inspiring  arrange- 
ment of  scientific  courses,  and  so  forth.  I  wish,  in- 
deed, it  were  possible  to  believe  that  substituting 
biology  for  Greek  prose  composition,  or  history  with 
models  and  photographs  and  diagrams  for  Latin 
versification,  would  make  any  considerable  difference 
in  this  matter.  For  so  one  might  discuss  this  ques- 
tion and  still  give  no  offence  to  a  most  amiable  and 
influential  class  of  men.  But  the  roots  of  the  evil, 
the  ultimate  cause  of  that  typical  young  man's  dead- 
ness,  lie  not  at  all  in  that  direction.  To  indicate  the 
direction  in  which  it  does  lie  is  quite  unavoidably  to 
give  offence  to  an  indiscriminatingly  sensitive  class. 
Yet  there  is  need  to  speak  plainly.  This  deadening 
of  soul  comes  not  from  the  omission  or  inclusion  of 
this  specific  subject  or  that;  it  is  the  effect  of  the 
general  scholastic  atmosphere.  It  is  an  atmosphere 

257 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

that  admits  of  no  inspiration  at  all.  It  is  an  atmos- 
phere from  which  living  stimulating  influences  have 
been  excluded,  from  which  stimulating  and  vigorous 
personalities  are  now  being  carefully  eliminated,  and 
in  which  dull,  prosaic  men  prevail  invincibly.  The 
explanation  of  the  inert  commonness  of  "Kappa's" 
schoolboy  lies  not  in  his  having  learnt  this  or  not 
learnt  that,  but  in  the  fact  that  from  seven  to  twenty 
he  has  been  in  the  intellectual  shadow  of  a  number 
of  good-hearted,  sedulously  respectable,  conscien- 
tiously manly,  conforming,  well-behaved  men,  who 
never,  to  the  knowledge  of  their  pupils  and  the 
public,  at  any  rate,  think  strange  thoughts,  do 
imaginative  or  romantic  things,  pay  tribute  to 
beauty,  laugh  carelessly,  or  countenance  any  irregu- 
larity in  the  world.  All  erratic  and  enterprising 
tendencies  in  him  have  been  checked  by  them  and 
brought  at  last  to  nothing ;  and  so  he  emerges  a  mere 
residuum  of  decent  minor  dispositions.  The  dullness 
of  the  scholastic  atmosphere,  the  grey,  intolerant 
mediocrity  that  is  the  natural  or  assumed  quality  of 
every  upper-class  schoolmaster,  is  the  true  cause  of 
the  spiritual  etiolation  of  "Kappa's"  young  friend. 
Now,  it  is  a  very  grave  thing,  I  know,  to  bring  this 
charge  against  a  great  profession — to  say,  as  I  do  say, 
that  it  is  collectively  and  individually  dull.  But 
someone  has  to  do  this  sooner  or  later;  we  have 
restrained  ourselves  and  argued  away  from  the  ques- 
tion too  long.  There  is,  I  allege,  a  great  lack  of 
vigorous  and  inspiring  minds  in  our  schools.  Our 

•a  $8 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

upper-class  schools  are  out  of  touch  with  the  thought 
of  the  time,  in  a  backwater  of  intellectual  apathy. 
We  have  no  original  or  heroic  school-teachers.  Let 
me  ask  the  reader  frankly  what  part  our  leading 
headmasters  play  in  his  intellectual  world;  if  when 
some  prominent  one  among  them  speaks  or  writes 
or  talks,  he  expects  anything  more  than  platitudes 
and  little  things?  Has  he  ever  turned  aside  to  learn 
what  this  headmaster  or  that  thought  of  any  question 
that  interested  him  ?  Has  he  ever  found  freshness  or 
power  in  a  schoolmaster's  discourse;  or  found  a 
schoolmaster  caring  keenly  for  fine  and  beautiful 
things  ?  Who  does  not  know  the  schoolmaster's  trite, 
safe  admirations,  his  thin,  evasive  discussion,  his 
sham  enthusiasms  for  cricket,  for  fly-fishing,  for 
perpendicular  architecture,  for  boyish  traits;  his 
timid  refuge  in  "good  form,"  his  deadly  silences? 

And  if  we  do  not  find  him  a  refreshing  and  inspir- 
ing person,  and  his  mind  a  fountain  of  thought  in 
which  we  bathe  and  are  restored,  is  it  likely  our  sons 
will?  If  the  schoolmaster  at  large  is  grey  and  dull, 
shirking  interesting  topics  and  emphatic  speech, 
what  must  he  be  like  in  the  monotonous  class-room? 
These  may  seem  wanton  charges  to  some,  but  I  am 
not  speaking  without  my  book.  Monthly  I  am 
brought  into  close  contact  with  the  pedagogic  in- 
telligence through  the  medium  of  three  educational 
magazines.  A  certain  morbid  habit  against  which 
I  struggle  in  vain  makes  me  read  everything  I  catch 
a  schoolmaster  writing.  I  am,  indeed,  one  of  the 

259 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

faithful  band  who  read  the  Educational  Supplement 
of  the  Times.  In  these  papers  schoolmasters  write 
about  their  business,  lectures  upon  the  questions  of 
their  calling  are  reported  at  length,  and  a  sort  of 
invalid  discussion  moves  with  painful  decorum 
through  the  correspondence  column.  The  scholastic 
mind  so  displayed  in  action  fascinates  me.  It  is  like 
watching  a  game  of  billiards  with  wooden  cushes  and 
beechwood  balls. 

§2 

But  let  me  take  one  special  instance.  In  a  peri- 
odical, now  no  longer  living,  called  the  Independent 
Review,  there  appeared  some  years  ago  a  very  curious 
and  typical  contribution  by  the  Headmaster  of  Dul- 
wich,  which  I  may  perhaps  use  as  an  illustration  of 
the  mental  habits  which  seem  inseparably  associated 
with  modern  scholastic  work.  It  is  called  "English 
Ideas  on  Education,"  and  it  begins — trite,  imitative, 
undistinguished — thus : 

"The  most  important  question  in  a  country  is  that 
of  education,  and  the  most  important  people  in  a 
country  are  those  who  educate  its  inhabitants. 
Others  have  most  of  the  present  in  their  hands :  those 
who  educate  have  all  the  future.  With  the  present 
is  bound  up  all  the  happiness  only  of  the  utterly 
selfish  and  the  thoughtless  among  mankind;  on  the 
future  rest  all  the  thoughts  of  every  parent  and  every 
wise  man  and  patriot." 

It  is  the  opening  of  a  boy's  essay.  And  from  first 
260 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

to  last  this  remarkable  composition  is  at  or  below 
that  level.  It  is  an  entirely  inconclusive  paper,  it  is 
impossible  to  understand  why  it  was  written;  it 
quotes  nothing,  it  says  nothing  about  and  was  prob- 
ably written  in  ignorance  of  "Kappa"  or  any  other 
modern  contributor  to  English  ideas,  and  it  occupied 
about  six  and  a  quarter  of  the  large-type  pages  of 
this  now  vanished  Independent  Review.  "English 
Ideas  on  Education" ! — this  very  brevity  is  eloquent, 
the  more  so  since  the  style  is  by  no  means  succinct. 
It  must  be  read  to  be  believed.  It  is  quite  extraordi- 
narily non-prehensile  in  quality  and  substance,  noth- 
ing is  gripped  and  maintained  and  developed;  it  is 
like  the  passing  of  a  lax  hand  over  the  surfaces  of 
disarranged  things.  It  is  difficult  to  read,  because 
one's  mind  slips  over  it  and  emerges  too  soon  at  the 
end,  mildly  puzzled  though  incurious  still  as  to  what 
it  is  all  about.  One  perceives  Mr.  Gilkes  through  a 
fog  dimly  thinking  that  Greek  has  something  vital 
to  do  with  "a  knowledge  of  language  and  man," 
that  the  classical  master  is  in  some  mysterious  way 
superior  to  the  science  man  and  more  imaginative, 
and  that  science  men  ought  not  to  be  worried  with 
the  Greek  that  is  too  high  for  them;  and  he  seems, 
too,  to  be  un/ier  the  odd  illusion  that  "on  all  this" 
Englishmen  "seem  now  to  be  nearly  in  agreement," 
and  also  on  the  opinion  that  games  are  a  little  over- 
done and  that  civic  duties  and  the  use  of  the  rifle 
ought  to  be  taught.  Statements  are  made — the  sort 
of  statements  that  are  suffered  in  an  atmosphere 
18  261 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

where  there  is  no  swift,  fierce  opposition  to  be  feared; 
frill  out  into  vague  qualifications  and  butt  gently 
against  other  partially  contradictory  statements. 
There  is  a  classification  of  minds — the  sort  of  classi- 
fication dear  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  essayists,  made  for 
the  purposes  of  the  essay  and  unknown  to  psychology. 
There  are,  we  are  told,  accurate,  unimaginative, 
ingenious  minds  capable  of  science  and  kindred 
vulgar  things  (such  was  Archimedes),  and  vague, 
imaginative  minds,  with  the  gift  for  language  and  for 
the  treatment  of  passion  and  the  higher  indefinable 
things  (such  as  Homer  and  Mr.  Gilkes),  and,  some- 
how, this  justifies  those  who  are  destined  for  "sci- 
ence ' '  in  dropping  Greek.  Certain  ' '  considerations, ' ' 
however,  loom  inconclusively  upon  this  issue — rather 
like  interested  spectators  of  a  street  fight  in  a  fog. 
For  example,  to  learn  a  language  is  valuable  "in  pro- 
portion as  the  nation  speaking  it  is  great" — a  most 
empty  assertion;  and  "no  languages  are  so  good," 
for  the  purpose  of  improving  style,  "as  the  exact 
and  beautiful  languages  of  Rome  and  Greece." 

Is  it  not  time  at  least  that  this  last,  this  favourite 
but  threadbare  article  of  the  schoolmaster's  creed 
was  put  away  for  good?  Everyone  who  has  given 
any  attention  to  this  question  must  be  aware  that 
the  intellectual  gesture  is  entirely  different  in  highly 
inflected  languages  such  as  Greek  and  Latin  and  in 
so  uninflected  a  language  as  English,  that  learning 
Greek  to  improve  one's  English  style  is  like  learning 
to  swim  in  order  to  fence  better,  and  that  familiarity 

262 


THE   SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

with  Greek  seems  only  too  often  to  render  a  man 
incapable  of  clear,  strong  expression  in  English  at  all. 
Yet  Mr.  Gilkes  can  permit  this  old  assertion,  so  dear 
to  country  rectors  and  the  classical  scholar,  to  appear 
within  a  column's  distance  of  such  style  as  this : 

"It  is  now  understood  that  every  subject  is  valu- 
able, if  it  is  properly  taught;  it  will  perform  that 
which,  as  follows  from  the  accounts  given  above  of 
the  aim  of  education,  is  the  work  most  important 
in  the  case  of  boys — that  is,  it  will  draw  out  their 
faculties  and  make  them  useful  in  the  world,  alert, 
trained  in  industry,  and  able  to  understand,  so  far 
as  their  school  lessons  educated  them,  and  make 
themselves  master  of  any  subject  set  before  them." 

This  quotation  is  conclusive. 

§3 

I  am  haunted  by  a  fear  that  the  careless  reader 
will  think  I  am  writing  against  upper-class  school- 
masters. I  am,  it  is  undeniable,  writing  against  their 
dullness,  but  it  is,  I  hold,  a  dullness  that  is  imposed 
upon  them  by  the  conditions  under  which  they  live. 
Indeed,  I  believe,  could  I  put  the  thing  directly  to 
the  profession — "Do  you  not  yourselves  feel  need- 
lessly limited  and  dull?" — I  should  receive  a  majority 
of  affirmative  responses.  We  have,  as  a  nation,  a 
certain  ideal  of  what  a  schoolmaster  must  be ;  to  that 
he  must  by  art  or  nature  approximate,  and  there  is 
no  help  for  it  but  to  alter  our  ideal.  Nothing 

263 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

else  of  any  wide  value  can  be  done  until  that  is 
done. 

In  the  first  place,  the  received  ideal  omits  a  most 
necessary  condition.  We  do  not  insist  upon  a  head- 
master, or  indeed  any  of  our  academic  leaders  and 
dignitaries,  being  a  man  of  marked  intellectual  char- 
acter, a  man  of  intellectual  distinction.  It  is  as- 
sumed, rather  lightly  in  many  cases,  that  he  has 
done  "good  work,"  as  they  say — the  sort  of  good 
work  that  is  usually  no  good  at  all,  that  increases 
nothing,  changes  nothing,  stimulates  no  one,  leads 
no  whither.  That,  surely,  must  be  altered.  We 
must  see  to  it  that  our  leading  schoolmasters  at  any 
rate  must  be  men  of  insight  and  creative  intelligence, 
men  who  could  at  a  pinch  write  a  good  novel  or 
produce  illuminating  criticism  or  take  an  original 
part  in  theological  or  philosophical  discussion,  or  do 
any  of  these  minor  things.  They  must  be  authentic 
men,  taking  a  line  of  their  own  and  capable  of  in- 
tellectual passion.  They  should  be  able  to  make 
their  mark  outside  the  school,  if  only  to  show  they 
carry  a  living  soul  into  it.  As  things  are,  nothing  is 
so  fatal  to  a  schoolmaster's  career  as  to  do  that. 

And  closer^  related  to  this  omission  is  our  extreme 
insistence  upon  what  we  call  high  moral  character, 
meaning,  really,  something  very  like  an  entire  ab- 
sence of  moral  character.  We  insist  upon  tact,  con- 
formity, and  an  unblemished  record.  Now,  in  these 
days  of  warring  opinion,  these  days  of  gigantic, 
strange  issues  that  cannot  possibly  be  expressed  in 

264 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

the  formulae  of  the  smaller  times  that  have  gone 
before,  tact  is  evasion,  conformity  formality,  and 
silence  an  unblemished  record,  mere  evidence  of  the 
damning  burial  of  a  talent  of  life.  The  sort  of  man 
into  whose  hands  we  give  our  sons'  minds  must  never 
have  experimented  morally  or  thought  at  all  freely 
or  vigorously  about,  for  example,  God,  Socialism,  the 
Mosaic  account  of  the  Creation,  social  procedure, 
republicanism,  beauty,  love,  or,  indeed,  about  any- 
thing likely  to  interest  an  intelligent  adolescent.  At 
the  approach  of  all  such  things  he  must  have  acquired 
the  habit  of  the  modest  cough,  the  infectious  trick 
of  the  nice  evasion.  How  can  "Kappa"  expect  in- 
spiration from  the  decorous  resultants  who  satisfy 
these  conditions?  What  brand  can  ever  be  lit  at 
altars  that  have  borne  no  fire?  And  you  find  the 
secondary  schoolmaster  who  complies  with  these 
restrictions  becoming  the  zealous  and  grateful  agent 
of  the  tendencies  that  have  made  him  what  he  is, 
converting  into  a  practice  those  vague  dreads  of 
idiosyncrasy,  of  positive  acts  and  new  ideas,  that 
dictated  the  choice  of  him  and  his  rule  of  life.  His 
moral  teaching  amounts  to  this:  to  inculcate  truth- 
telling  about  small  matters  and  evasion  about  large, 
and  to  cultivate  a  morbid  obsession  in  the  necessary 
dawn  of  sexual  consciousness.  So  far  from  wanting 
to  stimulate  the  imagination,  he  hates  and  dreads  it. 
I  find  him  perpetually  haunted  by  a  ridiculous  fear 
that  boys  will  "do  something,"  and  in  his  terror  seek- 
ing whatever  is  dull  and  unstimulating  and  tiring  in 

265 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

intellectual  work,  clipping  their  reading,  censoring 
their  periodicals,  expurgating  their  classics,  substi- 
tuting the  stupid  grind  of  organised  "games"  for 
natural,  imaginative  play,  persecuting  loafers — and 
so  achieving  his  end  and  turning  out  at  last,  clean- 
looking,  passively  well-behaved,  apathetic,  obliter- 
ated young  men,  with  the  nicest  manners  and  no 
spark  of  initiative  at  all,  quite  safe  not  to  "do  any- 
thing" for  ever. 

I  submit  this  may  be  a  very  good  training  for 
polite  servants,  but  it  is  not  the  way  to  make  masters 
in  the  world.  If  we  English  believe  we  are  indeed  a 
masterful  people,  we  must  be  prepared  to  expose  our 
children  to  more  and  more  various  stimulations  than 
we  do;  they  must  grow  up  free,  bold,  adventurous, 
initiated,  even  if  they  have  to  take  more  risks  in  the 
doing  of  that.  An  able  and  stimulating  teacher  is 
as  rare  as  a  fine  artist,  and  is  a  thing  worth  having 
for  your  son,  even  at  the  price  of  shocking  your  wife 
by  his  lack  of  respect  for  that  magnificent  com- 
promise, the  Establishment,  or  you  by  his  Socialism 
or  by  his  Catholicism  or  Darwinism,  or  even  by  his 
erroneous  choice  of  ties  and  collars.  Boys  who  are 
to  be  free,  masterly  men  must  hear  free  men  talking 
freely  of  religion,  of  philosophy,  of  conduct.  They 
must  have  heard  men  of  this  opinion  and  that,  put- 
ting what  they  believe  before  them  with  all  the 
courage  of  conviction.  They  must  have  an  idea  of 
will  prevailing  over  form.  It  is  far  more  important 
that  boys  should  learn  from  original,  intellectually 

266 


THE   SCHOOLMASTER  AND  THE  EMPIRE 

keen  men  than  they  should  learn  from  perfectly 
respectable  men,  or  perfectly  orthodox  men,  or  per- 
fectly nice  men.  The  vital  thing  to  consider  about 
your  son's  schoolmaster  is  whether  he  talked  lifeless 
twaddle  yesterday  by  way  of  a  lesson,  and  not 
whether  he  loved  unwisely  or  was  born  of  poor 
parents,  or  was  seen  wearing  a  frock-coat  in  combi- 
nation with  a  bowler,  or  confessed  he  doubted  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  or  called  himself  a  Socialist,  or  any 
disgraceful  thing  like  that,  so  many  years  ago.  It 
is  that  sort  of  thing  "Kappa"  must  invert  if  he 
wants  a  change  in  our  public  schools.  You  may 
arrange  and  rearrange  curricula,  abolish  Greek, 
substitute  "science" — it  will  not  matter  a  rap. 
Even  those  model  canoes  of  yours,  "Kappa,"  will 
be  wasted  if  you  still  insist  upon  model  schoolmasters. 
So  long  as  we  require  our  schoolmasters  to  be  politic, 
conforming,  undisturbing  men,  setting  up  Polonius 
as  an  ideal  for  them,  so  long  will  their  influence 
deaden  the  souls  of  our  sons. 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF   MOTHERHOOD 

SOME  few  years  ago  the  Fabian  Society,  which  has 
been  so  efficient  in  keeping  English  Socialism  to  the 
lines  of  "artfulness  and  the  'eighties,"  refused  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood. 
Subsequently  it  repented  and  produced  a  character- 
istic pamphlet  in  which  the  idea  was  presented  with 
a  sort  of  minimising  furtiveness  as  a  mean  little  ex- 
tension of  outdoor  relief.  These  Fabian  Socialists, 
instead  of  being  the  daring  advanced  people  they  are 
supposed  to  be,  are  really  in  many  things  twenty 
years  behind  the  times.  There  need  be  nothing 
shamefaced  about  the  presentation  of  the  Endow- 
ment of  Motherhood.  There  is  nothing  shameful 
about  it.  It  is  a  plain  and  simple  idea  for  which  the 
mind  of  the  man  in  the  street  has  now  been  very 
completely  prepared.  It  has  already  crept  into  social 
legislation  to  the  extent  of  thirty  shillings. 

I  suppose  if  one  fact  has  been  hammered  into  us 
in  the  past  two  decades  more  than  any  other  it  is 
this:  that  the  supply  of  children  is  falling  off  in  the 
modern  State;  that  births,  and  particularly  good- 
quality  births,  are  not  abundant  enough;  that  the 
birth-rate,  and  particularly  the  good-class  birth-rate, 
falls  steadily  below  the  needs  of  our  future. 

268 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

If  no  one  else  has  said  a  word  about  this  important 
matter,  ex-President  Roosevelt  would  have  sufficed 
to  shout  it  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Every  civilised 
community  is  drifting  towards  "race-suicide"  as 
Rome  drifted  into  "race-suicide"  at  the  climax  of 
her  empire. 

Well,  it  is  absurd  to  go  on  building  up  a  civilisa- 
tion with  a  dwindling  supply  of  babies  in  the  cradles 
— and  these  not  of  the  best  possible  sort — and  so  I 
suppose  there  is  hardly  an  intelligent  person  in  the 
English-speaking  communities  who  has  not  thought 
of  some  possible  remedy  —  from  the  naive  scold- 
ings of  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  the  more  stolid  of 
the  periodicals  to  sane  and  intelligible  legislative 
projects. 

The  reasons  for  the  fall  in  the  birth-rate  are  obvi- 
ous enough.  It  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the 
individualistic  competition  of  modern  life.  People 
talk  of  modern  women  "shirking"  motherhood,  but 
it  would  be  a  silly  sort  of  universe  in  which  a  large 
proportion  of  women  had  any  natural  and  instinctive 
desire  to  shirk  motherhood,  and,  I  believe,  a  huge 
proportion  of  modern  women  are  as  passionately  pre- 
disposed towards  motherhood  as  ever  women  were. 
But  modern  conditions  conspire  to  put  a  heavy  handi- 
cap upon  parentage  and  an  enormous  premium  upon 
the  partial  or  complete  evasion  of  offspring,  and  that 
is  where  the  clue  to  the  trouble  lies.  Our  social 
arrangements  discourage  parentage  very  heavily, 
and  the  rational  thing  for  a  statesman  to  do  in  the 

269 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

matter  is  not  to  grow  eloquent,  but  to  do  intelligent 
things  to  minimise  that  discouragement. 

Consider  the  case  of  an  energetic  young  man  and 
an  energetic  young  woman  in  our  modern  world.  So 
long  as  they  remain  "unencumbered"  they  can  sub- 
sist on  a  comparatively  small  income  and  find  free- 
dom and  leisure  to  watch  for  and  follow  opportu- 
nities of  self -advancement ;  they  can  travel,  get 
knowledge  and  experience,  make  experiments,  suc- 
ceed. One  might  almost  say  the  conditions  of  suc- 
cess and  self-development  in  the  modern  world  are 
to  defer  marriage  as  long  as  possible,  and  after  that 
to  defer  parentage  as  long  as  possible.  And  even 
when  there  is  a  family  there  is  the  strongest  tempta- 
tion to  limit  it  to  three  or  four  children  at  the  outside. 
Parents  who  can  give  three  children  any  opportunity 
in  life  prefer  to  do  that  than  turn  out,  let  us  say, 
eight  ill-trained  children  at  a  disadvantage,  to  be- 
come the  servants  and  unsuccessful  competitors  of 
the  offspring  of  the  restrained.  That  fact  bites  us 
all;  it  does  not  require  a  search.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  rant  about  "race-suicide,"  but  there  are  the  clear, 
hard  conditions  of  contemporary  circumstances  for 
all  but  the  really  rich,  and  so  patent  are  they  that 
I  doubt  if  all  the  eloquence  of  Mr.  Roosevelt  and  its 
myriad  echoes  has  added  a  thousand  babies  to  the 
eugenic  wealth  of  the  English-speaking  world. 

Modern  married  people,  and  particularly  those  in 
just  that  capable  middle  class  from  which  children 
are  most  urgently  desirable  from  the  statesman's 

270 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF   MOTHERHOOD 

point  of  view,  are  going  to  have  one  or  two  children 
to  please  themselves,  but  they  are  not  going  to  have 
larger  families  under  existing  conditions,  though  all 
the  ex-Presidents  and  all  the  pulpits  in  the  world 
clamour  together  for  them  to  do  so. 

If  having  and  rearing  children  is  a  private  affair, 
then  no  one  has  any  right  to  revile  small  families; 
if  it  is  a  public  service,  then  the  parent  is  justified  in 
looking  to  the  State  to  recognise  that  service  and 
offer  some  compensation  for  the  worldly  disadvan- 
tages it  entails.  He  is  justified  in  saying  that  while 
his  unencumbered  rival  wins  past  him  he  is  doing  the 
State  a  most  precious  service  in  the  world  by  rearing 
and  educating  a  family,  and  that  the  State  has  be- 
come his  debtor. 

In  other  words,  the  modern  State  has  got  to  pay 
for  its  children  if  it  really  wants  them — and  more 
particularly  it  has  to  pay  for  the  children  of  good 
homes. 

The  alternative  to  that  is  racial  replacement  and 
social  decay.  That  is  the  essential  idea  conveyed 
by  this  phrase  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood. 

Now,  how  is  the  paying  to  be  done?  That  needs 
a  more  elaborate  answer,  of  which  I  will  give  here 
only  the  roughest,  crudest  suggestion. 

Probably  it  would  be  found  best  that  the  pay- 
ment should  be  made  to  the  mother,  as  the  admin- 
istrator of  the  family  budget,  that  its  amount  should 
be  made  dependent  upon  the  quality  of  the  home  in 
which  the  children  are  being  reared,  upon  their 

271 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

health  and  physical  development,  and  upon  their 
educational  success.  Be  it  remembered,  we  do  not 
want  any  children;  we  want  good-quality  children. 
The  amount  to  be  paid,  I  would  particularly  point 
out,  should  vary  with  the  standing  of  the  home. 
People  of  that  excellent  class  which  spends  over  a 
hundred  a  year  on  each  child  ought  to  get  about  that 
much  from  the  State,  and  people  of  the  class  which 
spends  five  shilling  a  week  per  head  on  them  would 
get  about  that,  and  so  on.  And  if  these  payments 
were  met  by  a  special  income  tax  there  would  be  no 
social  injustice  whatever  in  such  an  unequality  of 
payment.  Each  social  stratum  would  pay  according 
to  its  prosperity,  and  the  only  redistribution  that 
would  in  effect  occur  would  be  that  the  childless 
people  of  each  class  would  pay  for  the  children  of 
that  class.  The  childless  family  and  the  small 
family  would  pay  equally  with  the  large  family,  in- 
comes being  equal,  but  they  would  receive  in  propor- 
tions varying  with  the  health  and  general  quality  of 
their  children.  That,  I  think,  gives  the  broad 
principles  upon  which  the  payments  would  be 
made. 

Of  course,  if  these  subsidies  resulted  in  too  rapid 
a  rise  in  the  birth-rate,  it  would  be  practicable  to 
diminish  the  inducement,  and  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  birth-rate  still  fell,  it  would  be  easy  to  increase 
the  inducement  until  it  sufficed. 

That  concisely  is  the  idea  of  the  Endowment  of 
Motherhood.  I  believe  firmly  that  some  such  ar- 

272 


THE  ENDOWMENT  OF  MOTHERHOOD 

rangement  is  absolutely  necessary  to  the  continuous 
development  of  the  modern  State.  These  proposals 
arise  so  obviously  out  of  the  needs  of  our  time  that 
I  cannot  understand  any  really  intelligent  opposition 
to  them.  I  can,  however,  understand  a  partial  and 
silly  application  of  them.  It  is  most  important  that 
our  good-class  families  should  be  endowed,  but  the 
whole  tendency  of  the  timid  and  disingenuous  pro- 
gressivism  of  our  time,  which  is  all  mixed  up  with 
ideas  of  charity  and  aggressive  benevolence  to  the 
poor,  would  be  to  apply  this — as  that  Fabian  tract 
I  mention  does — only  to  the  poor  mother.  To  endow 
poor  and  bad-class  motherhood  and  leave  other 
people  severely  alone  would  be  a  proceeding  so 
supremely  idiotic,  so  harmful  to  our  national  quality, 
as  to  be  highly  probable  in  the  present  state  of  our 
public  intelligence.  It  comes  quite  on  a  level  with 
the  policy  of  starving  middle-class  education  that  has 
left  us  with  nearly  the  worst  educated  middle  class 
in  Western  Europe. 

The  Endowment  of  Motherhood  does  not  attract 
the  bureaucratic  type  of  reformer  because  it  offers  a 
minimum  chance  of  meddlesome  interference  with 
people's  lives.  There  would  be  no  chance  of  "seek- 
ing out"  anybody  and  applying  benevolent  but  grim 
compulsions  on  the  strength  of  it.  In  spite  of  its 
wide  scope  it  would  be  much  less  of  a  public  nuisance 
than  that  Wet  Children's  Charter,  which  exasperates 
me  every  time  I  pass  a  public-house  on  a  rainy  night. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  would  be  an  enormous 

273 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

stimulus  to  people  to  raise  the  quality  of  their  homes, 
study  infantile  hygiene,  seek  out  good  schools  for 
them — and  do  their  duty  as  all  good  parents  natu- 
rally want  to  do  now — if  only  economic  forces  were 
not  so  pitilessly  against  them — thoroughly  and  well. 


DOCTORS 

IN  that  extravagant  world  of  which  I  dream,  in 
which  people  will  live  in  delightful  cottages  and 
ground  rents  will  serve  instead  of  rates,  and  every- 
one will  have  a  chance  of  being  happy — in  that  im- 
possible world  all  doctors  will  be  members  of  one 
great  organisation  for  the  public  health,  with  all  or 
most  of  their  income  guaranteed  to  them:  I  doubt 
if  there  will  be  any  private  doctors  at  all. 

Heaven  forbid  I  should  seem  to  write  a  word 
against  doctors  as  they  are.  Daily  I  marvel  at  the 
wonders  the  general  practitioner  achieves,  having 
regard  to  the  difficulties  of  his  position. 

But  I  cannot  hide  from  myself,  and  I  do  not  intend 
to  hide  from  anyone  else,  my  firm  persuasion  that 
the  services  the  general  practitioner  is  able  to  render 
us  are  not  one-tenth  so  effectual  as  they  might  be  if, 
instead  of  his  being  a  private  adventurer,  he  were 
a  member  of  a  sanely  organised  public  machine. 
Consider  what  his  training  and  equipment  are,  con- 
sider the  peculiar  difficulties  of  his  work,  and  then 
consider  for  a  moment  what  better  conditions  might 
be  invented,  and  perhaps  you  will  not  think  my 
estimate  of  one-tenth  an  excessive  understatement 
in  this  matter. 

275 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Nearly  the  whole  of  our  medical  profession  and 
most  of  our  apparatus  for  teaching  and  training 
doctors  subsist  on  strictly  commercial  lines  by 
earning  fees.  This  chief  source  of  revenue  is  eked 
out  by  the  wanton  charity  of  old  women,  and  con- 
spicuous subscriptions  by  popularity  hunters,  and 
a  small  but  growing  contribution  (in  the  salaries  of 
medical  officers  of  health  and  so  forth)  from  the 
public  funds.  But  the  fact  remains  that  for  the  great 
mass  of  the  medical  profession  there  is  no  living  to  be 
got  except  at  a  salary  for  hospital  practice  or  by  earn- 
ing fees  in  receiving  or  attending  upon  private  cases. 

So  long  as  a  doctor  is  learning  or  adding  to  knowl- 
edge, he  earns  nothing,  and  the  common,  unintelli- 
gent man  does  not  see  why  he  should  earn  anything. 
So  that  a  doctor  who  has  no  religious  passion  for 
poverty  and  self-devotion  gets  through  the  minimum 
of  training  and  learning  as  quickly  and  as  cheaply 
as  possible,  and  does  all  he  can  to  fill  up  the  rest  of 
his  time  in  passing  rapidly  from  case  to  case.  The 
busier  he  keeps,  the  less  his  leisure  for  thought  and 
learning,  the  richer  he  grows,  and  the  more  he  is 
esteemed.  His  four  or  five  years  of  hasty,  crowded 
study  are  supposed  to  give  him  a  complete  and  final 
knowledge  of  the  treatment  of  every  sort  of  disease, 
and  he  goes  on  year  after  year,  often  without  co- 
operation, working  mechanically  in  the  common 
incidents  of  practice,  births,  cases  of  measles  and 
whooping-cough,  and  so  forth,  and  blundering  more 
or  less  in  whatever  else  turns  up. 

276 


DOCTORS 

There  are  no  public  specialists  to  whom  he  can 
conveniently  refer  the  difficulties  he  constantly  en- 
counters ;  only  in  the  case  of  rich  patients  is  the  spe- 
cialist available;  there  are  no  properly  organised 
information  bureaus  for  him,  and  no  means  whatever 
of  keeping  him  informed  upon  progress  and  discovery 
in  medical  science.  He  is  not  even  required  to  set 
apart  a  month  or  so  in  every  two  or  three  years  in 
order  to  return  to  lectures  and  hospitals  and  refresh 
his  knowledge.  Indeed,  the  income  of  the  average 
general  practitioner  would  not  permit  of  such  a 
thing,  and  almost  the  only  means  of  contact  between 
him  and  current  thought  lies  in  the  one  or  other  of 
our  two  great  medical  weeklies  to  which  he  happens 
to  subscribe. 

Now  just  as  I  have  nothing  but  praise  for  the 
average  general  practitioner,  so  I  have  nothing  but 
praise  and  admiration  for  those  stalwart-looking 
publications.  Without  them  I  can  imagine  nothing 
but  the  most  terrible  intellectual  atrophy  among  our 
medical  men.  But  since  they  are  private  proper- 
ties run  for  profit  they  have  to  pay,  and  half  their 
bulk  consists  of  the  brilliantly  written  advertise- 
ments of  new  drugs  and  apparatus.  They  give  much 
knowledge,  they  do  much  to  ventilate  perplexing 
questions,  but  a  broadly  conceived  and  properly 
endowed  weekly  circular  could,  I  believe,  do  much 
more.  At  any  rate,  in  my  Utopia  this  duty  of  feeding 
up  the  general  practitioners  will  not  be  left  to  private 
enterprise. 

19  277 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Behind  the  first  line  of  my  medical  army  will  be 
a  second  line  of  able  men  constantly  digesting  new 
research  for  its  practical  needs,  correcting,  explaining, 
announcing;  and,  in  addition,  a  force  of  public  spe- 
cialists to  whom  every  difficulty  in  diagnosis  will  be 
at  once  referred.  And  there  will  be  a  properly 
organised  system  of  reliefs  that  will  allow  the  general 
practitioner  and  his  right  hand,  the  nurse,  to  come 
back  to  the  refreshment  of  study  before  his  knowl- 
edge and  mind  have  got  rusty.  But  then  my  Utopia 
is  a  Socialistic  system.  Under  our  present  system 
of  competitive  scramble,  under  any  system  that 
reduces  medical  practice  to  mere  fee-hunting,  nothing 
of  this  sort  is  possible. 

Then  in  my  Utopia,  for  every  medical  man  who 
was  mainly  occupied  in  practice,  I  would  have 
another  who  was  mainly  occupied  in  or  about  re- 
search. People  hear  so  much  about  modern  research 
that  they  do  not  realise  how  entirely  inadequate  it 
is  in  amount  and  equipment.  Our  general  public  is 
still  too  stupid  to  understand  the  need  and  value  of 
sustained  investigations  in  any  branch  of  knowledge 
at  all.  In  spite  of  all  the  lessons  of  the  last  century, 
it  still  fails  to  realise  how  discovery  and  invention 
enrich  the  community  and  how  paying  an  investment 
is  the  public  employment  of  clever  people  to  think 
and  experiment  for  the  benefit  of  all.  It  still  expects 
to  get  a  Newton  or  a  Joule  for  £800  a  year,  and 
requires  him  to  conduct  his  researches  in  the  margin 
of  time  left  over  when  he  has  got  through  his  annual 

278 


DOCTORS 

eighty  or  ninety  lectures.  It  imagines  discoveries 
are  a  sort  of  inspiration  that  comes  when  professors 
are  running  to  catch  trains.  It  seems  incapable  of 
imagining  how  enormous  are  the  untried  possibilities 
of  research.  Of  course,  if  you  will  only  pay  a  handful 
of  men  salaries  at  which  the  cook  of  any  large  London 
hotel  would  turn  up  his  nose,  you  cannot  expect  to 
have  the  master  minds  of  the  world  at  your  service; 
and  save  for  a  few  independent  or  devoted  men, 
therefore,  it  is  not  reasonable  to  suppose  that  such 
a  poor  little  dribble  of  medical  research  as  is  now 
going  on  is  in  the  hands  of  persons  of  much  more 
than  average  mental  equipment.  How  can  it  be? 

One  hears  a  lot  of  the  rigorous  research  into  the 
problem  of  cancer  that  is  now  going  on.  Does  the 
reader  realise  that  all  the  men  in  the  whole  world 
who  are  giving  any  considerable  proportion  of  their 
time  to  this  cancer  research  would  pack  into  a  very 
small  room,  that  they  are  working  in  little  groups 
without  any  properly  organised  system  of  inter- 
communication, and  that  half  of  them  are  earning 
less  than  a  quarter  of  the  salary  of  a  Bond  Street 
shopwalker  by  those  vastly  important  inquiries? 
Not  one  cancer  case  in  twenty  thousand  is  being 
properly  described  and  reported.  And  yet,  in  com- 
parison with  other  diseases,  cancer  is  being  particu- 
larly well  attended  to. 

The  general  complacency  with  the  progress  in 
knowledge  we  have  made  and  are  making  is  ridicu- 
lously unjustifiable.  Enormous  things  were  no  doubt 

279 


done  in  the  nineteenth  century  in  many  fields  of 
knowledge,  but  all  that  was  done  was  out  of  all 
proportion  petty  in  comparison  with  what  might  have 
been  done.  I  suppose  the  whole  of  the  unprece- 
dented progress  in  material  knowledge  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  the  work  of  two  or  three  thousand 
men,  who  toiled  against  opposition,  spite  and  endless 
disadvantages,  without  proper  means  of  intercom- 
munication and  with  wretched  facilities  for  experi- 
ment. Such  discoveries  as  were  distinctively  medical 
were  the  work  of  only  a  few  hundred  men.  Now, 
suppose  instead  of  that  scattered  band  of  unco- 
ordinated workers  a  great  army  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  well-paid  men;  suppose,  for  instance, 
the  community  had  kept  as  many  scientific  and 
medical  investigators  as  it  has  bookmakers  and 
racing  touts  and  men  about  town — should  we  not 
know  a  thousand  times  as  much  as  we  do  about 
disease  and  health  and  strength  and  power? 

But  these  are  Utopian  questionings.  The  sane, 
practical  man  shakes  his  head,  smiles  pityingly  at 
my  dreamy  impracticability,  and  passes  them  by. 


AN  AGE  OF  SPECIALISATION 

THERE  is  something  of  the  phonograph  in  all  of 
us,  but  in  the  sort  of  eminent  person  who  makes 
public  speeches  about  education  and  reading,  and 
who  gives  away  prizes  and  opens  educational  institu- 
tions, there  seems  to  be  little  else  but  gramophone. 

These  people  always  say  the  same  things,  and  say 
them  in  the  same  note.  And  why  should  they  do 
that  if  they  are  really  individuals? 

There  is,  I  cannot  but  suspect,  in  the  mysterious 
activities  that  underlie  life,  some  trade  in  records  for 
these  distinguished  gramophones,  and  it  is  a  trade 
conducted  upon  cheap  and  wholesale  lines.  There 
must  be  in  these  demiurgic  profundities  a  rapid 
manufacture  of  innumerable  thousands  of  that  par- 
ticular speech  about  "scrappy  reading,"  and  that 
contrast  of  "modern"  with  "serious"  literature,  that 
babbles  about  the  provinces  so  incessantly.  Gramo- 
phones thinly  disguised  as  bishops,  gramophones  still 
more  thinly  disguised  as  eminent  statesmen,  gramo- 
phones K.C.B.  and  gramophones  F.R.S.  have  bra- 
zened it  at  us  time  after  time,  and  will  continue  to 
brazen  it  to  our  grandchildren  when  we  are  dead 
and  all  our  poor  protests  forgotten.  And  almost 
equally  popular  in  their  shameless  mouths  is  the 

281 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

speech  that  declares  this  present  age  to  be  an  age  of 
specialisation.  We  all  know  the  profound  droop  of 
the  eminent  person's  eyelids  as  he  produces  that 
discovery,  the  edifying  deductions  or  the  solemn 
warnings  he  unfolds  from  this  proposition,  and  all  the 
dignified,  inconclusive  rigmarole  of  that  cylinder. 
And  it  is  nonsense  from  beginning  to  end. 

This  is  most  distinctly  not  an  age  of  specialisation. 
There  has  hardly  been  an  age  in  the  whole  course  of 
history  less  so  than  the  present.  A  few  moments  of 
reflection  will  suffice  to  demonstrate  that.  This  is 
beyond  any  precedent  an  age  of  change,  change  in 
the  appliances  of  life,  in  the  average  length  of  life, 
in  the  general  temper  of  life;  and  the  two  things  are 
incompatible.  It  is  only  under  fixed  conditions  that 
you  can  have  men  specialising. 

They  specialise  extremely,  for  example,  under  such 
conditions  as  one  had  in  Hindustan  up  to  the  coming 
of  the  present  generation.  There  the  metal  worker 
or  the  cloth  worker,  the  wheelwright  or  the  druggist 
of  yesterday  did  his  work  under  almost  exactly  the 
same  conditions  as  his  predecessor  did  it  five  hundred 
years  before.  He  had  the  same  resources,  the  same 
tools,  the  same  materials;  he  made  the  same  objects 
for  the  same  ends.  Within  the  narrow  limits  thus 
set  him  he  carried  work  to  a  fine  perfection ;  his  hand, 
his  mental  character  were  subdued  to  his  medium. 
His  dress  and  bearing  even  were  distinctive ;  he  was, 
in  fact,  a  highly  specialised  man.  He  transmitted 
his  difference  to  his  sons.  Caste  was  the  logical 

282 


AN  AGE  OF  SPECIALISATION 

expression  in  the  social  organisation  of  this  state  of 
high  specialisation,  and,  indeed,  what  else  is  caste 
or  any  definite  class  distinctions  but  that?  But  the 
most  obvious  fact  of  the  present  time  is  the  disap- 
pearance of  caste  and  the  fluctuating  uncertainty  of 
all  class  distinctions. 

If  one  looks  into  the  conditions  of  industrial  em- 
ployment, specialisation  will  be  found  to  linger  just 
in  proportion  as  a  trade  has  remained  unaffected  by 
inventions  and  innovation.  The  building  trade,  for 
example,  is  a  fairly  conservative  one.  A  brick  wall 
is  made  to-day  much  as  it  was  made  two  hundred 
years  ago,  and  the  bricklayer  is  in  consequence  a 
highly  skilled  and  inadaptable  specialist.  No  one 
who  has  not  passed  through  a  long  and  tedious  train- 
ing can  lay  bricks  properly.  And  it  needs  a  specialist 
to  plough  a  field  with  horses  or  to  drive  a  cab  through 
the  streets  of  London.  Thatchers,  old-fashioned 
cobblers,  and  hand  workers  are  all  specialised  to  a 
degree  no  new  modern  calling  requires.  With  ma- 
chinery skill  disappears  and  unspecialised  intelli- 
gence comes  in.  Any  generally  intelligent  man  can 
learn  in  a  day  or  two  to  drive  an  electric  tram,  fix 
up  an  electric  lighting  installation,  or  guide  a  building 
machine  or  a  steam  plough.  He  must  be,  of  course, 
much  more  generally  intelligent  than  the  average 
bricklayer,  but  he  needs  far  less  specialised  skill. 
To  repair  machinery  requires,  of  course,  a  special 
sort  of  knowledge,  but  not  a  special  sort  of  train- 
ing. 

283 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

In  no  way  is  this  disappearance  of  specialisation 
more  marked  than  in  military  and  naval  affairs.  In 
the  great  days  of  Greece  and  Rome  war  was  a  special 
calling,  requiring  a  special  type  of  man.  In  the 
Middle  Ages  war  had  an  elaborate  technique,  in 
which  the  footman  played  the  part  of  an  unskilled 
labourer,  and  even  within  a  period  of  a  hundred  years 
it  took  a  long  period  of  training  and  discipline  before 
the  common  discursive  man  could  be  converted  into 
the  steady  soldier.  Even  to-day  traditions  work 
powerfully,  through  extravagance  of  uniform,  and 
through  survivals  of  that  mechanical  discipline  that 
was  so  important  in  the  days  of  hand-to-hand  fight- 
ing, to  keep  the  soldier  something  other  than  a  man. 
For  all  the  lessons  of  the  Boer  war  we  are  still  inclined 
to  believe  that  the  soldier  has  to  be  something 
severely  parallel,  carrying  a  rifle  he  fires  under  orders, 
obedient  to  the  pitch  of  absolute  abnegation  of  his 
private  intelligence.  We  still  think  that  our  officers 
have,  like  some  very  elaborate  and  noble  sort  of 
performing  animal,  to  be  "trained."  They  learn  to 
fight  with  certain  specified  "arms"  and  weapons, 
instead  of  developing  intelligence  enough  to  use  any- 
thing that  comes  to  hand. 

But,  indeed,  when  a  really  great  European  war 
does  come  and  lets  loose  motor-cars,  bicycles,  wireless 
telegraphy,  aeroplanes,  new  projectiles  of  every  size 
and  shape,  and  a  multitude  of  ingenious  persons  upon 
the  preposterously  vast  hosts  of  conscription,  the 
military  caste  will  be  missing  within  three  months  of 

284 


AN  AGE  OF  SPECIALISATION 

the  beginning,  and  the  inventive,  versatile,  intelligent 
man  will  have  come  to  his  own. 

And  what  is  true  of  a  military  caste  is  equally  true 
of  a  special  governing  class  such  as  our  public  schools 
maintain. 

The  misunderstanding  that  has  given  rise  to  this 
proposition  that  this  is  an  age  of  specialisation,  and 
through  that  no  end  of  mischief  in  misdirected  tech- 
nical education  and  the  like,  is  essentially  a  con- 
fusion between  specialisation  and  the  division  of 
labour.  No  doubt  this  is  an  age  when  everything 
makes  for  wider  and  wider  co-operations.  Work  that 
was  once  done  by  one  highly  specialised  man — the 
making  of  a  watch,  for  example — is  now  turned  out 
wholesale  by  elaborate  machinery,  or  effected  in 
great  quantities  by  the  contributed  efforts  of  a  num- 
ber of  people.  Each  of  these  people  may  bring  a 
highly  developed  intelligence  to  bear  for  a  time  upon 
the  special  problem  in  hand,  but  that  is  quite  a 
different  thing  from  specialising  to  do  that  thing. 

This  is  typically  shown  in  scientific  research.  The 
problem  or  the  parts  of  problems  upon  which  the 
inquiry  of  an  individual  man  is  concentrated  are  often 
much  narrower  than  the  problems  that  occupied 
Faraday  or  Dalton,  and  yet  the  hard  and  fast  lines 
that  once  divided  physicist  from  chemist,  or  botanist 
from  pathologist  have  long  since  gone.  Professor 
Farmer,  the  botanist,  investigates  cancer,  and  the 
ordinary  educated  man,  familiar  though  he  is  with 
their  general  results,  would  find  it  hard  to  say  which 

285 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

were  the  chemists  and  which  the  physicists  among 
Professors  Dewar  and  Ramsey,  Lord  Rayleigh  and 
Curie.  The  classification  of  sciences  that  was  such 
a  solemn  business  to  our  grandfathers  is  now  merely 
a  mental  obstruction. 

It  is  interesting  to  glance  for  a  moment  at  the 
possible  source  of  this  mischievous  confusion  between 
specialisation  and  the  division  of  labour.  I  have 
already  glanced  at  the  possibility  of  a  diabolical  world 
manufacturing  gramophone  records  for  our  bishops 
and  statesmen  and  suchlike  leaders  of  thought,  but 
if  we  dismiss  that  as  a  merely  elegant  trope,  I  must 
confess  I  think  it  is  the  influence  of  Herbert  Spencer. 
His  philosophy  is  pervaded  by  an  insistence  which  is, 
I  think,  entirely  without  justification,  that  the  uni- 
verse, and  every  sort  of  thing  in  it,  moves  from  the 
simple  and  homogeneous  to  the  complex  and  hetero- 
geneous. An  unwary  man  obsessed  with  that  idea 
would  be  very  likely  to  assume  without  consideration 
that  men  were  less  specialised  in  a  barbaric  state  of 
society  than  they  are  to-day.  I  think  I  have  given 
reasons  for  believing  that  the  reverse  of  this  is  nearer 
the  truth. 


IS  THERE  A  PEOPLE? 

OF  all  the  great  personifications  that  have  domi- 
nated the  mind  of  man,  the  greatest,  the  most  mar- 
vellous, the  most  impossible  and  the  most  incredible, 
is  surely  the  People,  that  impalpable  monster  to 
which  the  world  has  consecrated  its  political  institu- 
tions for  the  last  hundred  years. 

It  is  doubtful  now  whether  this  stupendous  super- 
stition has  reached  its  grand  climacteric,  and  there 
can  be  little  or  no  dispute  that  it  is  destined  to  play 
a  prominent  part  in  the  history  of  mankind  for  many 
years  to  come.  There  is  a  practical  as  well  as  a 
philosophical  interest,  therefore,  in  a  note  or  so  upon 
the  attributes  of  this  legendary  being.  I  write 
"legendary,"  but  thereby  I  display  myself  a  sceptic. 
To  a  very  large  number  of  people  the  People  is  one 
of  the  profoundest  realities  in  life.  They  believe — 
what  exactly  do  they  believe  about  the  people? 

When  they  speak  of  the  People,  they  certainly 
mean  something  more  than  the  whole  mass  of  indi- 
viduals in  a  country  lumped  together.  That  is  the 
people,  a  mere  varied  aggregation  of  persons,  moved 
by  no  common  motive,  a  complex  interplay.  The 
People,  as  the  believer  understands  the  word,  is 
something  more  mysterious  than  that.  The  People 

287 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

is  something  that  overrides  and  is  added  to  the 
individualities  that  make  up  the  people.  It  is,  as 
it  were,  itself  an  individuality  of  a  higher  order — as, 
indeed,  its  capital  "P"  displays.  It  has  a  will  of 
its  own,  which  is  not  the  will  of  any  particular  person 
in  it,  it  has  a  power  of  purpose  and  judgment  of  a 
superior  sort.  It  is  supposed  to  be  the  underlying 
reality  of  all  national  life  and  the  real  seat  of  all 
public  religious  emotion.  Unfortunately,  it  lacks 
powers  of  expression,  and  so  there  is  need  of  rulers 
and  interpreters.  If  they  express  it  well  in  law  and 
fact,  in  book  and  song,  they  prosper  under  its 
mysterious  approval;  if  they  do  not,  it  revolts  or 
forgets  or  does  something  else  of  an  equally  anni- 
hilatory  sort.  That,  briefly,  is  the  idea  of  the 
People.  My  modest  thesis  is  that  there  exists  noth- 
ing of  the  sort,  that  the  world  of  men  is  entirely  made 
up  of  the  individuals  that  compose  it,  and  that  the 
collective  action  is  just  the  algebraic  sum  of  all 
individual  actions. 

How  far  the  opposite  opinion  may  go,  one  must 
talk  to  intelligent  Americans  or  read  the  contem- 
porary literature  of  the  first  French  Revolution  to 
understand.  I  find,  for  example,  so  typical  a  young 
American  as  the  late  Frank  Morris  roundly  asserting 
that  it  is  the  People  to  whom  we  are  to  ascribe  the 
triumphant  emergence  of  the  name  of  Shakespeare 
from  the  ruck  of  his  contemporaries,  and  the  passage 
in  which  this  assertion  is  made  is  fairly  representative 
of  the  general  expression  of  this  sort  of  mysticism. 

288 


IS  THERE  A  PEOPLE? 

"One  must  keep  one's  faith  in  the  People — the  Plain 
People,  the  Burgesses,  the  Grocers — else  of  all  men 
the  artists  are  most  miserable  and  their  teachings 
vain.  Let  us  admit  and  concede  that  this  belief  is 
ever  so  sorely  tried  at  times.  .  .  .  But  in  the  end, 
and  at  last,  they  will  listen  to  the  true  note  and  dis- 
criminate between  it  and  the  false."  And  then  he 
resorts  to  italics  to  emphasise:  "In  the  last  analysis 
the  People  are  always  right." 

And  it  was  that  still  more  typical  American, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  who  declared  his  equal  confidence 
in  the  political  wisdom  of  this  collective  being. 
"You  can  fool  all  the  people  some  of  the  time  and 
some  of  the  people  alt  the  time,  but  you  cannot  fool 
all  the  people  all  the  time."  The  thing  is  in  the 
very  opening  words  of  the  American  Constitution, 
and  Theodore  Parker  calls  it  "the  American  idea" 
and  pitches  a  still  higher  note:  "A  government  of 
all  the  people,  by  all  the  people,  for  all  the  people; 
a  government  of  all  the  principles  of  eternal  justice, 
the  unchanging  law  of  God." 

It  is  unavoidable  that  a  collective  wisdom  distinct 
from  any  individual  and  personal  one  is  intended  in 
these  passages.  Mr.  Norris,  for  example,  never 
figured  to  himself  a  great  wave  of  critical  discrimi- 
nation sweeping  through  the  ranks  of  the  various 
provision  trades  and  a  multitude  of  simple,  plain 
burgesses  preferring  Shakespeare  and  setting  Mar- 
lowe aside.  Such  a  particularisation  of  his  statement 
would  have  at  once  reduced  it  to  absurdity.  Nor 

289 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

does  any  American  see  the  people  particularised  in 
that  way.  They  believe  in  the  People  one  and 
indivisible,  a  simple,  mystical  being,  which  per- 
vades and  dominates  the  community  and  determines 
its  final  collective  consequences. 

Now  upon  the  belief  that  there  is  a  People  rests 
a  large  part  of  the  political  organisation  of  the 
modern  world.  The  idea  was  one  of  the  chief  fruits 
of  the  speculations  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
the  American  Constitution  is  its  most  perfect  ex- 
pression. One  turns,  therefore,  inevitably  to  the 
American  instance,  not  because  it  is  the  only  one, 
but  because  there  is  the  thing  in  its  least  complicated 
form.  We  have  there  an  almost  exactly  logical 
realisation  of  this  belief.  The  whole  political  ma- 
chine is  designed  and  expressed  to  register  the 
People's  will,  literature  is  entirely  rewarded  and  con- 
trolled by  the  effectual  suffrages  of  the  bookseller's 
counter,  science  (until  private  endowment  inter- 
vened) was  in  the  hands  of  the  State  Legislatures, 
and  religion  the  concern  of  the  voluntary  congrega- 
tions. 

On  the  assumption  that  there  is  a  People  there 
could  be  no  better  state  of  affairs.  You  and  I  and 
everyone,  except  for  a  vote  or  a  book,  or  a  service 
now  and  then,  can  go  about  our  business,  you  to  your 
grocery  and  I  to  mine,  and  the  direction  of  the 
general  interests  rests  safe  in  the  People's  hands. 
Now  that  is  by  no  means  a  caricature  of  the  attitude 
of  mind  of  many  educated  Americans.  You  find  they 

290 


IS  THERE  A  PEOPLE? 

have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  actual  politics,  and 
are  inclined  to  regard  the  professional  politician  with 
a  certain  contempt;  they  trouble  their  heads  hardly 
at  all  about  literature,  and  they  contemplate  the 
general  religious  condition  of  the  population  with 
absolute  unconcern.  It  is  not  that  they  are  un- 
patriotic or  morally  trivial  that  they  stand  thus  dis- 
engaged; it  is  that  they  have  a  fatalistic  belief  in 
this  higher  power.  Whatever  troubles  and  abuses 
may  arise  they  have  an  absolute  faith  that  "in  the 
last  analysis"  the  People  will  get  it  right. 

And  now  suppose  that  I  am  right  and  that  there 
are  no  People !  Suppose  that  the  crowd  is  really  no 
more  than  a  crowd,  a  vast  miscellaneous  confusion 
of  persons  which  grows  more  miscellaneous  every 
year.  Suppose  this  conception  of  the  People  arose 
out  of  a  sentimental  idealisation,  Rousseau  fashion, 
of  the  ancient  homogeneous  peasant  class — a  class 
that  is  rapidly  being  swept  out  of  existence  by  modern 
industrial  developments — and  that  whatever  slender 
basis  of  fact  it  had  in  the  past  is  now  altogether  gone. 
What  consequences  may  be  expected? 

It  does  not  follow  that  because  the  object  of  your 
reverence  is  a  dead  word  you  will  get  no  oracles  from 
the  shrine.  If  the  sacred  People  remains  impassive, 
inarticulate,  non-existent,  there  are  always  the  keep- 
ers of  the  shrine  who  will  oblige.  Professional  poli- 
ticians, venial  and  violent  men,  will  take  over  the 
derelict  political  control,  people  who  live  by  the  book 
trade  will  alone  have  a  care  for  letters,  research  and 

291 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

learning  will  be  subordinated  to  political  expediency, 
and  a  great  development  of  noisily  competitive  re- 
ligious enterprises  will  take  the  place  of  any  common 
religious  formula.  There  will  commence  a  secular 
decline  in  the  quality  of  public  thought,  emotion  and 
activity.  There  will  be  no  arrest  or  remedy  for  this 
state  of  affairs  so  long  as  that  superstitious  faith  in 
the  People  as  inevitably  right  "in  the  last  analysis" 
remains.  And  if  my  supposition  is  correct,  it  should 
be  possible  to  find  in  the  United  States,  where  faith 
in  the  people  is  indisputably  dominant,  some  such 
evidence  of  the  error  of  this  faith.  Is  there? 

I  write  as  one  that  listens  from  afar.  But  there 
come  reports  of  legislative  and  administrative  cor- 
ruption, of  organised  public  blackmail,  that  do  seem 
to  carry  out  my  thesis.  One  thinks  of  Edgar  Allan 
Poe,  who  dreamt  of  founding  a  distinctive  American 
literature,  drugged  and  killed  almost  as  it  were 
symbolically,  amid  electioneering,  and  nearly  lied 
out  of  all  posthumous  respect  by  that  scoundrel 
Griswold;  one  thinks  of  State  Universities  that  are 
no  more  than  mints  for  bogus  degrees;  one  thinks  of 
' '  Science ' '  Christianity  and  Zion  City.  These  things 
are  quite  insufficient  for  a  Q.E.D.,  but  I  submit  they 
favour  my  proposition. 

Suppose  there  is  no  People  at  all,  but  only  enor- 
mous, differentiating  millions  of  men.  All  sorts  of 
widely  accepted  generalisations  will  collapse  if  that 
foundation  is  withdrawn.  I  submit  it  as  worth 
considering. 

292 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

§i 

THERE  is  a  growing  discord  between  governments 
and  governed  in  the  world. 

There  has  always  been  discord  between  govern- 
ments and  governed  since  States  began ;  government 
has  always  been  to  some  extent  imposed,  and  obedi- 
ence to  some  extent  reluctant.  We  have  come  to 
regard  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  under  all  abso- 
lutisms and  narrow  oligarchies  the  community,  so 
soon  as  it  became  educated  and  as  its  social  elabora- 
tion developed  a  free  class  with  private  initiatives, 
so  soon,  indeed,  as  it  attained  to  any  power  of 
thought  and  expression  at  all,  would  express  dis- 
content. But  we  English  and  Americans  and 
Western  Europeans  generally  had  supposed  that,  so 
far  as  our  own  communities  were  concerned,  this 
discontent  was  already  anticipated  and  met  by 
representative  institutions.  We  had  supposed  that, 
with  various  safeguards  and  elaborations,  our  com- 
munities did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  govern  themselves. 
Our  panacea  for  all  discontents  was  the  franchise. 
Social  and  national  dissatisfaction  could  be  given  at 
the  same  time  a  voice  and  a  remedy  in  the  ballot- 
20  293 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

box.  Our  liberal  intelligences  could  and  do  still 
understand  Russians  wanting  votes,  Indians  wanting 
votes,  women  wanting  votes.  The  history  of  nine- 
teenth-century Liberalism  in  the  world  might  almost 
be  summed  up  in  the  phrase  "progressive  enfran- 
chisement." But  these  are  the  desires  of  a  closing 
phase  in  political  history.  The  new  discords  go 
deeper  than  that.  The  new  situation  which  con- 
fronts our  Liberal  intelligence  is  the  discontent  of 
the  enfranchised,  the  contempt  and  hostility  of  the 
voters  for  their  elected  delegates  and  governments. 
This  discontent,  this  resentment,  this  contempt 
even,  and  hostility  to  duly  elected  representatives  is 
no  mere  accident  of  this  democratic  country  or  that ; 
it  is  an  almost  worldwide  movement.  It  is  an  al- 
most universal  disappointment  with  so-called  popular 
government,  and  in  many  communities — in  Great 
Britain  particularly — it  is  manifesting  itself  by  an 
unprecedented  lawlessness  in  political  matters,  and 
in  a  strange  and  ominous  contempt  for  the  law.  One 
sees  it,  for  example,  in  the  refusal  of  large  sections 
of  the  medical  profession  to  carry  out  insurance 
legislation,  in  the  repudiation  of  Irish  Home  Rule  by 
Ulster,  and  in  the  steady  drift  of  great  masses  of  in- 
dustrial workers  towards  the  conception  of  a  uni- 
versal strike.  The  case  of  the  discontented  workers 
in  Great  Britain  and  France  is  particularly  remark- 
able. These  people  form  effective  voting  majorities 
in  many  constituencies;  they  send  alleged  Socialist 
and  Labour  representatives  into  the  legislative  assem- 

294 


THE   DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

bly;  and,  in  addition,  they  have  their  trade  unions 
with  staffs  of  elected  officials,  elected  ostensibly  to 
state  their  case  and  promote  their  interests.  Yet 
nothing  is  now  more  evident  than  that  these  officials, 
working-men  representatives  and  the  like,  do  not 
speak  for  their  supporters,  and  are  less  and  less  able 
to  control  them.  The  Syndicalist  movement,  sa- 
botage in  France,  and  Larkinism  in  Great  Britain, 
are,  from  the  point  of  view  of  social  stability,  the 
most  sinister  demonstrations  of  the  gathering  anger 
of  the  labouring  classes  with'  representative  insti- 
tutions. These  movements  are  not  revolutionary 
movements,  not  movements  for  reconstruction  such 
as  were  the  democratic  Socialist  movements  that 
closed  the  nineteenth  century.  They  are  angry  and 
vindictive  movements.  They  have  behind  them  the 
most  dangerous  and  terrible  of  purely  human  forces, 
the  wrath,  the  blind  destructive  wrath,  of  a  cheated 
crowd. 

Now,  so  far  as  the  insurrection  of  labour  goes, 
American  conditions  differ  from  European,  and  the 
process  of  disillusionment  will  probably  follow  a 
different  course.  American  labour  is  very  largely 
immigrant  labour  still  separated  by  barriers  of 
language  and  tradition  from  the  established  thought 
of  the  nation.  It  will  be  long  before  labour  in 
America  speaks  with  the  massed  effectiveness  of 
labour  in  France  and  England,  where  master  and 
man  are  racially  identical,  and  where  there  is  no 
variety  of  "Dagoes "  to  break  up  the  revolt.  But  in 

295 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

other  directions  the  American  disbelief  in  and  im- 
patience with  "elected  persons"  is  and  has  been  far 
profounder  than  it  is  in  Europe.  The  abstinence  of 
men  of  property  and  position  from  overt  politics,  and 
the  contempt  that  banishes  political  discussion  from 
polite  society,  are  among  the  first  surprises  of  the 
visiting  European  to  America,  and  now  that,  under 
an  organised  pressure  of  conscience,  college-trained 
men  and  men  of  wealth  are  abandoning  this  strike 
of  the  educated  and  returning  to  political  life,  it  is, 
one  notes,  with  a  prevailing  disposition  to  correct 
democracy  by  personality,  and  to  place  affairs  in  the 
hands  of  autocratic  mayors  and  presidents  rather 
than  to  carry  out  democratic  methods  to  the  logical 
end.  At  times  America  seems  hot  for  a  Caesar.  If 
no  Caesar  is  established,  then  it  will  be  the  good 
fortune  of  the  Republic  rather  than  its  democratic 
virtue  which  will  have  saved  it. 

And  directly  one  comes  to  look  into  the  quality 
and  composition  of  the  elected  governing  body  of  any 
modern  democratic  State,  one  begins  to  see  the 
reason  and  nature  of  its  widening  estrangement 
from  the  community  it  represents.  In  no  sense  are 
these  bodies  really  representative  of  the  thought  and 
purpose  of  the  nation;  the  conception  of  its  science, 
the  fresh  initiatives  of  its  philosophy  and  literature, 
the  forces  that  make  the  future  through  invention 
and  experiment,  exploration  and  trial  and  industrial 
development  have  no  voice,  or  only  an  accidental 
and  feeble  voice,  there.  The  typical  elected  person 

296 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

is  a  smart  rather  than  substantial  lawyer,  full  of 
cheap  catchwords  and  elaborate  tricks  of  procedure 
and  electioneering,  professing  to  serve  the  interests 
of  the  locality  which  is  his  constituency,  but  actually 
bound  hand  and  foot  to  the  specialised  political  asso- 
ciation, his  party,  which  imposed  him  upon  that 
constituency.  Arrived  at  the  legislature,  his  next 
ambition  is  office,  and  to  secure  and  retain  office  he 
engages  in  elaborate  manoeuvres  against  the  opposite 
party,  upon  issues  which  his  limited  and  specialised 
intelligence  indicates  as  electorally  effective.  But 
being  limited  and  specialised,  he  is  apt  to  drift  com- 
pletely out  of  touch  with  the  interests  and  feelings 
of  large  masses  of  people  in  the  community.  In 
Great  Britain,  the  United  States  and  France  alike 
there  is  a  constant  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  legis- 
lative body  to  drift  into  unreality,  and  to  bore  the 
country  with  the  disputes  that  are  designed  to  thrill 
it.  In  Great  Britain,  for  example,  at  the  present 
time  the  two  political  parties  are  both  profoundly 
unpopular  with  the  general  intelligence,  which  is 
sincerely  anxious,  if  only  it  could  find  a  way,  to  get 
rid  of  both  of  them.  Irish  Home  Rule — an  issue  as 
dead  as  mutton,  is  opposed  to  Tariff  Reform,  which 
has  never  been  alive.  Much  as  the  majority  of 
people  detest  the  preposterously  clumsy  attempts 
to  amputate  Ireland  from  the  rule  of  the  British 
Parliament  which  have  been  going  on  since  the  break- 
down of  Mr.  Gladstone's  political  intelligence,  their 
dread  of  foolish  and  scoundrelly  fiscal  adventurers  is 

297 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

sufficiently  strong  to  retain  the  Liberals  in  office. 
The  recent  exposures  of  the  profound  financial  rot- 
tenness of  the  Liberal  party  have  deepened  the  public 
resolve  to  permit  no  such  enlarged  possibilities  of 
corruption  as  Tariff  Reform  would  afford  their  at 
least  equally  dubitable  opponents.  And  meanwhile, 
beneath  those  ridiculous  alternatives,  those  shame 
issues,  the  real  and  very  urgent  affairs  of  the  nation, 
the  vast  gathering  discontent  of  the  workers  through- 
out the  Empire,  the  racial  conflicts  in  India  and 
South  Africa  which  will,  if  they  are  not  arrested,  end 
in  our  severance  from  India,  the  insane  waste  of 
national  resources,  the  control  of  disease,  the  fright- 
ful need  of  some  cessation  of  armament,  drift 
neglected.  .  .  . 

Now  do  these  things  indicate  the  ultimate  failure 
and  downfall  of  representative  government?  Was 
this  idea  which  inspired  so  much  of  the  finest  and 
most  generous  thought  of  the  eighteenth  and  nine- 
teenth centuries  a  wrong  idea,  and  must  we  go  back 
to  Caesarism  or  oligarchy  or  plutocracy  or  a  theoc- 
racy, to  Rome  or  Venice  or  Carthage,  to  the  strong 
man  or  the  ruler  by  divine  right,  for  the  political 
organisation  of  the  future? 

My  answer  to  that  question  would  be  an  emphatic 
No.  My  answer  would  be  that  the  idea  of  repre- 
sentative government  is  the  only  possible  idea  for 
the  government  of  a  civilised  community.  But  I 
would  add  that  so  far  representative  government  has 
not  had  even  the  beginnings  of  a  fair  trial.  So  far 

298 


THE   DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

we  have  not  had  representative  government,  but 
only  a  devastating  caricature. 

It  is  quite  plain  now  that  those  who  first  organised 
the  parliamentary  institutions  which  now  are  the 
ruling  institutions  of  the  greater  part  of  mankind  fell 
a  prey  to  certain  now  very  obvious  errors.  They  did 
not  realise  that  there  are  hundreds  of  different  ways 
in  which  voting  may  be  done,  and  that  every  way 
will  give  a  different  result.  They  thought,  and  it  is 
still  thought  by  a  great  number  of  mentally  indolent 
people,  that  if  a  country  is  divided  up  into  approxi- 
mately equivalent  areas,  each  returning  one  or  two 
representatives,  if  every  citizen  is  given  one  vote, 
and  if  there  is  no  legal  limit  to  the  presentation  of 
candidates,  that  presently  a  cluster  of  the  wisest, 
most  trusted  and  best  citizens  will  come  together  in 
the  legislative  assembly. 

In  reality  the  business  is  far  more  complicated  than 
this.  In  reality  a  country  will  elect  all  sorts  of 
different  people  according  to  the  electoral  method 
employed.  It  is  a  fact  that  anyone  who  chooses  to 
experiment  with  a  willing  school  or  club  may  verify. 
Suppose,  for  example,  that  you  take  your  country, 
give  every  voter  one  single  vote,  put  up  six  and 
twenty  candidates  for  a  dozen  vacancies,  and  give 
them  no  adequate  time  for  organisation.  The  voters, 
you  will  find,  will  return  certain  favourites,  A  and  B 
and  C  and  D  let  us  call  them,  by  enormous  majorities, 
and  behind  these  at  a  considerable  distance  will 
come  E,  F,  G,  H,  I,  J,  K,  and  L.  Now  give  your 

299 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

candidates  time  to  develop  organisation.  A  lot  of 
people  who  swelled  A's  huge  vote  will  dislike  J  and 
K  and  L  so  much,  and  prefer  M  and  N  so  much,  that 
if  they  are  assured  that  by  proper  organisation  A's 
return  can  be  made  certain  without  their  voting  for 
him,  they  will  vote  for  M  and  N.  But  they  will  do 
so  only  on  that  understanding.  Similarly  certain 
B-ites  will  want  O  and  P  if  they  can  be  got  without 
sacrificing  B.  So  that  adequate  party  organisation 
in  the  community  may  return  not  the  dozen  a  naive 
vote  would  give,  but  A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  G,  H,  M,  N, 
O,  P.  Now  suppose  that,  instead  of  this  arrange- 
ment, your  community  is  divided  into  twelve  con- 
stituencies and  no  candidate  may  contest  more  than 
one  of  them.  And  suppose  each  constituency  has 
strong  local  preferences.  A,  B  and  C  are  widely 
popular;  in  every  constituency  they  have  supporters, 
but  in  no  constituency  does  any  one  of  the  three 
command  a  majority.  They  are  great  men,  not 
local  men.  Q,  who  is  an  unknown  man  in  most  of 
the  country,  has,  on  the  contrary,  a  strong  sect  of 
followers  in  the  constituency  for  which  A  stands,  and 
beats  him  by  one  vote;  another  local  celebrity,  R, 
disposes  of  B  in  the  same  way ;  C  is  attacked  not  only 
by  S  but  T,  whose  peculiar  views  upon  vaccination, 
let  us  say,  appeal  to  just  enough  of  C's  supporters 
to  let  in  S.  Similar  accidents  happen  in  the  other 
constituencies,  and  the  country  that  would  have 
unreservedly  returned  A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  G,  H,  I, 
J,  K  and  L  on  the  first  system,  return  instead 

300 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

O,  P,  Q,  R,  S,  T,  U,  V,  W,  X,  Y,  Z.  Numerous 
voters  who  would  have  voted  for  A  if  they  had  a 
chance  vote  instead  for  R,  S,  T,  etc.,  numbers  who 
would  have  voted  for  B,  vote  for  Q,  V,  W,  X,  etc. 
But  now  suppose  that  A  and  B  are  opposed  to  one 
another,  and  that  there  is  a  strong  A  party  and  a 
strong  B  party  highly  organised  in  the  country.  B 
is  really  the  second  favourite  over  the  country  as  a 
whole,  but  A  is  the  first  favourite.  D,  F,  H,  J,  L, 
N,  P,  R,  U,  W,  Y  constitute  the  A  candidates,  and 
in  his  name  they  conquer.  B,  C,  E,  G,  I,  K,  M,  O, 
Q,  S,  V  are  all  thrown  out  in  spite  of  the  wide 
popularity  of  B  and  C.  B  and  C,  we  have  sup- 
posed, are  the  second  and  third  favourites,  and  yet 
they  go  out  in  favour  of  Y,  of  whom  nobody  has 
heard  before,  some  mere  hangers-on  of  A's.  Such  a 
situation  actually  occurs  in  both  Ulster  and  Home- 
Rule  Ireland. 

But  now  let  us  suppose  another  arrangement,  and 
that  is  that  the  whole  country  is  one  constituency, 
and  every  voter  has,  if  he  chooses  to  exercise  them, 
twelve  votes,  which,  however,  he  must  give,  if  he 
gives  them  all,  to  twelve  separate  people.  Then 
quite  certainly  A,  B,  C,  D  will  come  in,  but  the  tail 
will  be  different.  M,  N,  O,  P  may  come  up  next 
to  them,  and  even  Z,  that  eminent  non-party  man, 
may  get  in.  But  now  organisation  may  produce 
new  effects.  The  ordinary  man,  when  he  has  twelve 
votes  to  give,  likes  to  give  them  all,  so  that  there 
will  be  a  good  deal  of  wild  voting  at  the  tails  of  the 

301 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

voting  papers.  Now  if  a  small  resolute  band  decide 
to  plump  for  T  or  to  vote  only  for  A  and  T  or  B  and 
T,  T  will  probably  jump  up  out  of  the  rejected. 
This  is  the  system  which  gives  the  specialist,  the 
anti-vaccinator  or  what  not,  the  maximum  advan- 
tage. V,  W,  X  and  Y,  being  rather  hopeless  any- 
how, will  probably  detach  themselves  from  party 
and  make  some  special  appeal,  say  to  the  teetotal 
vote  or  the  Mormon  vote  or  the  single-tax  vote,  and 
so  squeeze  past  O,  P,  Q,  R,  who  have  taken  a  more 
generalised  line. 

I  trust  the  reader  will  bear  with  me  through  these 
alphabetical  fluctuations.  Many  people,  I  know 
from  colloquial  experiences,  do  at  about  this  stage 
fly  into  a  passion.  But  if  you  will  exercise  self- 
control,  then  I  think  you  will  see  my  point  that, 
according  to  the  method  of  voting,  almost  any  sort 
of  result  may  be  got  out  of  an  election  except  the 
production  of  a  genuinely  representative  assembly. 

And  that  is  the  a  priori  case  for  supposing,  what 
our  experience  of  contemporary  life  abundantly 
verifies,  that  the  so-called  representative  assemblies 
of  the  world  are  not  really  representative  at  all.  I 
will  go  farther  and  say  that  were  it  not  for  the  entire 
inefficiency  of  our  method  of  voting,  not  one-tenth 
of  the  present  American  and  French  Senators,  the 
French  Deputies,  the  American  Congressmen,  and 
the  English  Members  of  Parliament  would  hold  their 
positions  to-day.  They  would  never  have  been 
heard  of.  They  are  not  really  the  elected  representa- 

302 


THE   DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

tives  of  the  people ;  they  are  the  products  of  a  ridicu- 
lous method  of  election;  they  are  the  illegitimate 
children  of  the  party  system  and  the  ballot-box,  who 
have  ousted  the  legitimate  heirs  from  their  sover- 
eignty. They  are  no  more  the  expression  of  the 
general  will  than  the  Czar  or  some  President  by 
pronunciamento.  They  are  an  accidental  oligarchy 
of  adventurers.  Representative  government  has 
never  yet  existed  in  the  world;  there  was  an  attempt 
to  bring  it  into  existence  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  it  succumbed  to  an  infantile  disorder  at  the  very 
moment  of  its  birth.  What  we  have  in  the  place 
of  the  leaders  and  representatives  are  politicians  and 
"elected  persons." 

The  world  is  passing  rapidly  from  localised  to 
generalised  interests,  but  the  method  of  election  into 
which  our  fathers  fell  is  the  method  of  electing  one 
or  two  representatives  from  strictly  localised  con- 
stituencies. Its  immediate  corruption  was  in- 
evitable. If  discussing  and  calculating  the  future 
had  been,  as  it  ought  to  be,  a  common,  systematic 
occupation,  the  muddles  of  to-day  might  have  been 
foretold  a  hundred  years  ago.  From  such  a  rough 
method  of  election  the  party  system  followed  as  a 
matter  of  course.  In  theory,  of  course,  there  may 
be  any  number  of  candidates  for  a  constituency,  and 
a  voter  votes  for  the  one  he  likes  best;  in  practice 
there  are  only  two  or  three  candidates,  and  the 
voter  votes  for  the  one  most  likely  to  beat  the  candi- 
date he  likes  least.  It  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted 

303 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

that  in  contemporary  elections  we  vote  again;  we 
do  not  vote  for.  If  A,  B  and  C  are  candidates,  and 
you  hate  C  and  all  his  works  and  prefer  A,  but  doubt 
if  he  will  get  as  many  votes  as  B,  who  is  indifferent 
to  you,  the  chances  are  you  will  vote  for  B.  If 
C  and  B  have  the  support  of  organised  parties,  you 
are  still  less  likely  to  risk  "wasting"  your  vote 
upon  A.  If  your  real  confidence  is  in  G,  who  is  not 
a  candidate  for  your  constituency,  and  if  B  pledges 
himself  to  support  G,  while  A  retains  the  right  of 
separate  action,  you  may  vote  for  B  even  if  you 
distrust  him  personally.  Additional  candidates 
would  turn  any  election  of  this  type  into  a  wild 
scramble.  The  system  lies,  in  fact,  wholly  open  to 
the  control  of  political  organisations,  calls  out, 
indeed,  for  the  control  of  political  organisations,  and 
has  in  every  country  produced  what  is  so  evidently 
demanded.  The  political  organisations  to-day  rule 
us  unchallenged.  Save  as  they  speak  for  us,  the 
people  are  dumb. 

Elections  of  the  prevalent  pattern,  which  were 
intended  and  are  still  supposed  by  simple-minded 
people  to  give  every  voter  participation  in  govern- 
ment, do  as  a  matter  of  fact  effect  nothing  of  the 
sort.  They  give  him  an  exasperating  fragment  of 
choice  between  the  agents  of  two  party  organisations, 
over  neither  of  which  he  has  any  intelligible  control. 
For  twenty-five  years  I  have  been  a  voter,  and  in  all 
that  time  I  have  only  twice  had  an  opportunity  of 
voting  for  a  man  of  distinction  in  whom  I  had  the 

304 


THE   DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

slightest  confidence.  Commonly  my  choice  of  a 
"representative"  has  been  between  a  couple  of 
barristers  entirely  unknown  to  me  or  the  world  at 
large.  Rather  more  than  half  the  men  presented  for 
my  selection  have  not  been  English  at  all,  but  of 
alien  descent.  This,  then,  is  the  sum  of  the  political 
liberty  of  the  ordinary  American  or  Englishman,  that 
is  the  political  emancipation  which  Englishwomen 
have  shown  themselves  so  pathetically  eager  to 
share.  He  may  reject  one  of  two  undesirables,  and 
the  other  becomes  his  "representative."  Now  this 
is  not  popular  government  at  all ;  it  is  government  by 
the  profession  of  politicians,  whose  control  becomes 
more  and  more  irresponsible  in  just  the  measure 
that  they  are  able  to  avoid  real  factions  within  their 
own  body.  Whatever  the  two  party  organisations 
have  a  mind  to  do  together,  whatever  issue  they 
chance  to  reserve  from  "party  politics,"  is  as  much 
beyond  the  control  of  the  free  and  independent  voter 
as  if  he  were  a  slave  subject  in  ancient  Peru. 

Our  governments  in  the  more  civilised  parts  of  the 
world  to-day  are  only  in  theory  and  sentiment  demo- 
cratic. In  reality  they  are  democracies  so  eviscer- 
ated by  the  disease  of  bad  electoral  methods  that 
they  are  mere  cloaks  for  the  parasitic  oligarchies  that 
have  grown  up  within  their  form  and  substance. 
The  old  spirit  of  freedom  and  the  collective  purpose 
which  overthrew  and  subdued  priestcrafts  and  king- 
crafts, has  done,  so  it  seems,  only  to  make  way  for 
these  obscure  political  conspiracies.  Instead  of  lib- 

305 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

eral  institutions,  mankind  has  invented  a  new  sort 
of  usurpation.  And  it  is  not  unnatural  that  many 
of  us  should  be  in  a  phase  of  political  despair. 

These  oligarchies  of  the  party  organisations  have 
now  been  evolving  for  two  centuries,  and  their  in- 
herent evils  and  dangers  become  more  and  more 
manifest.  The  first  of  these  is  the  exclusion  from 
government  of  the  more  active  and  intelligent  sec- 
tions of  the  community.  It  is  not  treated  as  remark- 
able, it  is  treated  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  neither 
in  Congress  nor  in  the  House  of  Commons  is  there 
any  adequate  representation  of  the  real  thought  of 
the  time,  of  its  science,  invention  and  enterprise,  of 
its  art  and  feeling,  of  its  religion  and  purpose.  When 
one  speaks  of  Congressmen  or  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment, one  thinks,  to  be  plain  about  it,  of  intellectual 
riffraff.  When  one  hears  of  a  pre-eminent  man  in 
the  English-speaking  community,  even  though  that 
pre-eminence  may  be  in  political  or  social  science, 
one  is  struck  by  a  sense  of  incongruity  if  he  happens 
to  be  also  in  the  Legislature.  When  Lord  Haldane 
disengages  the  Gifford  lectures  or  Lord  Morley  writes 
a  Life  of  Gladstone  or  ex-President  Roosevelt  is  de- 
livered of  a  magazine  article,  there  is  the  same  sort 
of  excessive  admiration  as  when  a  Royal  Princess 
does  a  water-colour  sketch  or  a  dog  walks  on  its 
hind  legs. 

Now  this  intellectual  inferiority  of  the  legislator  is 
not  only  directly  bad  for  the  community  by  pro- 
ducing dull  and  stupid  legislation,  but  it  has  a  dis- 

306 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

couraging  and  dwarfing  effect  upon  our  intellectual 
life.  Nothing  so  stimulates  art,  thought  and  science 
as  realisation;  nothing  so  cripples  it  as  unreality. 
But  to  set  oneself  to  know  thoroughly  and  to  think 
clearly  about  any  human  question  is  to  unfit  oneself 
for  the  forensic  claptrap  which  is  contemporary 
politics,  is  to  put  oneself  out  of  the  effective  current 
Of  the  nation's  life.  The  intelligence  of  any  com- 
munity which  does  not  make  a  collective  use  of  that 
intelligence,  starves  and  becomes  hectic,  tends  in- 
evitably to  preciousness  and  futility  on  the  one  hand, 
and  to  insurgency,  mischief  and  anarchism  on  the 
other. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  social  stability  this 
estrangement  of  the  national  government  and  the 
national  intelligence  is  far  less  serious  than  the 
estrangement  between  the  governing  body  and  the 
real  feeling  of  the  mass  of  the  people.  To  many  ob- 
servers this  latter  estrangement  seems  to  be  drifting 
very  rapidly  towards  a  social  explosion  in  the  British 
Isles.  The  organised  masses  of  labour  find  them- 
selves baffled  both  by  their  parliamentary  repre- 
sentatives and  by  their  trade-union  officials.  They 
are  losing  faith  in  their  votes  and  falling  back  in 
anger  upon  insurrectionary  ideals,  upon  the  idea  of 
a  general  strike,  and  upon  the  expedients  of  sabotage. 
They  are  doing  this  without  any  constructive  pro- 
posals at  all,  for  it  is  ridiculous  to  consider  Syndical- 
ism as  a  constructive  proposal.  They  mean  mischief 
because  they  are  hopeless  and  bitterly  disappointed. 

307 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

It  is  the  same  thing  in  France,  and  before  many 
years  are  over  it  will  be  the  same  thing  in  America. 
That  way  lies  chaos.  In  the  next  few  years  there 
may  be  social  revolt  and  bloodshed  in  most  of  the 
great  cities  of  Western  Europe.  That  is  the  trend 
of  current  probability.  Yet  the  politicians  go  on  in 
an  almost  complete  disregard  of  this  gathering  storm. 
Their  jerrymandered  electoral  methods  are  like  wool 
in  their  ears,  and  the  rejection  of  Tweedledum  for 
Tweedledee  is  taken  as  a  "mandate"  for  Tweedle- 
dee's  distinctive  brand  of  political  unrealities.  .  .  . 

Is  this  an  incurable  state  of  things?  Is  this 
method  of  managing  our  affairs  the  only  possible 
electoral  method,  and  is  there  no  remedy  for  its 
monstrous  clumsiness  and  inefficiency  but  to  "show 
a  sense  of  humour,"  or,  in  other  words,  to  grin  and 
bear  it?  Or  is  it  conceivable  that  there  may  be  a 
better  way  to  government  than  any  we  have  yet 
tried,  a  method  of  government  that  would  draw 
every  class  into  conscious  and  willing  co-operation 
with  the  State,  and  enable  every  activity  of  the  com- 
munity to  play  its  proper  part  in  the  national  life? 
That  was  the  dream  of  those  who  gave  the  world 
representative  government  in  the  past.  Was  it  an 
impossible  dream? 

§2 

Is  this  disease  of  Parliaments  an  incurable  disease, 
and  have  we,  therefore,  to  get  along  as  well  as  we  can 
with  it,  just  as  a  tainted  and  incurable  invalid  diets 

308 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

and  is  careful  and  gets  along  through  life?  Or  is  it 
possible  that  some  entirely  more  representative  and 
effective  collective  control  of  our  common  affairs  can 
be  devised? 

The  answer  to  that  must  determine  our  attitude  to 
a  great  number  of  fundamental  questions.  If  no 
better  governing  body  is  possible  than  the  stupid, 
dilatory  and  forensic  assemblies  that  rule  in  France, 
Britain  and  America  to-day,  then  the  civilised  human 
community  has  reached  its  climax.  That  more  com- 
prehensive collective  handling  of  the  common  inter- 
ests to  which  science  and  intelligent  Socialism  point, 
that  collective  handling  which  is  already  urgently 
needed  if  the  present  uncontrolled  waste  of  natural 
resources  and  the  ultimate  bankruptcy  of  mankind  is 
to  be  avoided,  is  quite  beyond  the  capacity  of  such 
assemblies ;  already  there  is  too  much  in  their  clumsy 
and  untrustworthy  hands,  and  the  only  course  open 
to  us  is  an  attempt  at  enlightened  Individualism,  an 
attempt  to  limit  and  restrict  State  activities  in  every 
possible  way,  and  to  make  little  private  temporary 
islands  of  light  and  refinement  amidst  the  general 
disorder  and  decay.  All  collectivist  schemes,  all 
rational  Socialism,  if  only  Socialists  would  realise  it, 
all  hope  for  humanity,  indeed,  are  dependent  ulti- 
mately upon  the  hypothetical  possibility  of  a  better 
system  of  government  than  any  at  present  in 
existence. 

Let  us  see  first,  then,  if  we  can  lay  down  any 
conditions  which  such  a  better  governing  body  would 
21  309 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

satisfy.  Afterwards  it  will  be  open  to  us  to  believe 
or  disbelieve  in  its  attainment.  Imagination  is  the 
essence  of  creation.  If  we  can  imagine  a  better 
government  we  are  half-way  to  making  it. 

Now,  whatever  other  conditions  such  a  body  will 
satisfy,  we  may  be  sure  that  it  will  not  be  made  up 
of  members  elected  by  single-member  constituencies. 
A  single-member  constituency  must  necessarily  con- 
tain a  minority,  and  may  even  contain  a  majority  of 
dissatisfied  persons  whose  representation  is,  as  it 
were,  blotted  out  by  the  successful  candidate. 
Three  single-member  constituencies  which  might  all 
return  members  of  the  same  colour,  if  they  were 
lumped  together  to  return  three  members  would 
probably  return  two  of  one  colour  and  one  of  another. 
There  would  still,  however,  be  a  suppressed  minority 
averse  to  both  these  colours,  or  desiring  different 
shades  of  those  colours  from  those  afforded  them  in 
the  constituency.  Other  things  being  equal,  it  may 
be  laid  down  that  the  larger  the  constituency  and  the 
more  numerous  its  representatives,  the  greater  the 
chance  of  all  varieties  of  thought  and  opinion  being 
represented. 

But  that  is  only  a  preliminary  statement;  it  still 
leaves  untouched  all  the  considerations  advanced  in 
the  former  part  of  this  discussion  to  show  how  easily 
the  complications  and  difficulties  of  voting  lead  to  a 
falsification  of  the  popular  will  and  understanding. 
But  here  we  enter  a  region  where  a  really  scientific 
investigation  has  been  made,  and  where  established 

310 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

results  are  available.  A  method  of  election  was 
worked  out  by  Hare  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
that  really  does  seem  to  avoid  or  mitigate  nearly 
every  falsifying  or  debilitating  possibility  in  elections; 
it  was  enthusiastically  supported  by  J.  S.  Mill;  it  is 
now  advocated  by  a  special  society — the  Proportional 
Representation  Society — to  which  belong  men  of  the 
most  diverse  type  of  distinction,  united  only  by  the 
common  desire  to  see  representative  government  a 
reality  and  not  a  disastrous  sham.  It  is  a  method 
which  does  render  impossible  nearly  every  way  of 
forcing  candidates  upon  constituencies,  and  nearly 
every  trick  for  rigging  results  that  now  distorts  and 
cripples  the  political  life  of  the  modern  world.  It 
exacts  only  one  condition,  a  difficult  but  not  an  im- 
possible condition,  and  that  is  the  honest  scrutiny 
and  counting  of  the  votes. 

The  peculiar  invention  of  the  system  is  what  is 
called  the  single  transferable  vote — that  is  to  say,  a 
vote  which  may  be  given  in  the  first  instance  to  one 
candidate,  but  which,  in  the  event  of  his  already 
having  a  sufficient  quota  of  votes  to  return  him,  may 
be  transferred  to  another.  The  voter  marks  clearly 
in  the  list  of  the  candidates  the  order  of  his  preference 
by  placing  i,  2,  3,  and  so  forth  against  the  names. 
In  the  subsequent  counting  the  voting  papers  are 
first  classified  according  to  the  first  votes.  Let  us 
suppose  that  popular  person  A  is  found  to  have 
received  first  votes  enormously  in  excess  of  what  is 
needed  to  return  him.  The  second  votes  are  then 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

counted  on  his  papers,  and  after  the  number  of  votes 
necessary  to  return  him  has  been  deducted,  the  sur- 
plus votes  are  divided  in  due  proportion  among  the 
second-choice  names,  and  count  for  them.  That  is 
the  essential  idea  of  the  whole  thing.  At  a  stroke  all 
that  anxiety  about  wasting  votes  and  splitting  votes, 
which  is  the  secret  of  all  party  political  manipulation, 
vanishes.  You  may  vote  for  A  well  knowing  that 
if  he  is  safe  your  vote  will  be  good  for  C.  You  can 
make  sure  of  A,  and  at  the  same  time  vote  for  C. 
You  are  in  no  need  of  a  "ticket"  to  guide  you,  and 
you  need  have  no  fear  that  in  supporting  an  inde- 
pendent candidate  you  will  destroy  the  prospects  of 
some  tolerably  sympathetic  party  man  without  any 
compensating  advantage.  The  independent  candi- 
date does,  in  fact,  become  possible  for  the  first  time. 
The  Hobson's  choice  of  the  party  machine  is 
abolished. 

Let  me  be  a  little  more  precise  about  the  particu- 
lars of  this  method,  the  only  sound  method,  of  voting 
in  order  to  ensure  an  adequate  representation  of  the 
community.  Let  us  resort  again  to  the  constituency 
I  imagined  in  my  last  paper,  a  constituency  in  which 
candidates  represented  by  all  the  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet struggle  for  twelve  places.  And  let  us  suppose 
that  A,  B,  C  and  D  are  the  leading  favourites. 
Suppose  that  there  are  twelve  thousand  voters  in  the 
constituency,  and  that  three  thousand  votes  are  cast 
for  A — I  am  keeping  the  figures  as  simple  as  possible 
— then  A  has  two  thousand  more  than  is  needed  to 

312 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

return  him.  All  the  second  votes  on  his  papers  are 
counted,  and  it  is  found  that  600,  or  a  fifth  of  them, 
go  to  C;  500,  or  a  sixth,  go  to  E;  300,  or  a  tenth, 
to  G;  300  to  J;  200,  or  a  fifteenth,  each  to  K  and  L, 
and  a  hundred  each,  or  a  thirtieth,  to  M,  N,  O,  P, 
Q,  R,  S,  T,  W  and  Z.  Then  the  surplus  of  2,000 
is  divided  in  these  proportions — that  is,  a  fifth  of 
2,000  goes  to  C,  a  sixth  to  E,  and  the  rest  to  G,  J, 
etc.,  in  proportion.  C,  who  already  has  900  votes, 
gets  another  400,  and  is  now  returned,  and  has 
moreover  300  to  spare;  and  the  same  division  of  the 
next  votes  upon  C's  paper  occurs  as  has  already  been 
made  with  A's.  But  previously  to  this  there  has 
been  a  distribution  of  B's  surplus  votes,  B  having 
got  1,200  of  first  votes.  And  so  on.  After  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  surplus  votes  of  the  elect  at  the  top 
of  the  list,  there  is  a  distribution  of  the  second  votes 
upon  the  papers  of  those  who  have  voted  for  the 
hopeless  candidates  at  the  bottom  of  the  list.  At 
last  a  point  is  reached  when  twelve  candidates  have 
a  quota. 

In  this  way  the  "wasting"  of  a  vote,  or  the  rejec- 
tion of  a  candidate  for  any  reason  except  that  hardly 
anybody  wants  him,  becomes  practically  impossible. 
This  method  of  the  single  transferable  vote  with  very 
large  constituencies  and  many  members  does,  in  fact, 
give  an  entirely  valid  electoral  result ;  each  vote  tells 
for  all  it  is  worth,  and  the  freedom  of  the  voter  is 
only  limited  by  the  number  of  candidates  who  put 
up  or  are  put  up  for  election.  This  method,  and  this 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

method  alone,  gives  representative  government;  all 
others  of  the  hundred  and  one  possible  methods 
admit  of  trickery,  confusion  and  falsification.  Pro- 
portional representation  is  not  a  faddist  proposal, 
not  a  perplexing  ingenious  complication  of  a  simple 
business;  it  is  the  carefully  worked  out  right  way  to 
do  something  that  hitherto  we  have  been  doing  in 
the  wrong  way.  It  is  no  more  an  eccentricity  than 
is  proper  baking  in  the  place  of  baking  amidst  dirt 
and  with  unlimited  adulteration,  or  the  running  of 
trains  to  their  destinations  instead  of  running  them 
without  notice  into  casually  selected  sidings  and 
branch  lines.  It  is  not  the  substitution  of  something 
for  something  else  of  the  same  nature;  it  is  the 
substitution  of  right  for  wrong.  It  is  the  plain 
common  sense  of  the  greatest  difficulty  in  contem- 
porary affairs. 

I  know  that  a  number  of  people  do  not,  will  not, 
admit  this  of  Proportional  Representation.  Perhaps 
it  is  because  of  that  hideous  mouthful  of  words  for  a 
thing  that  would  be  far  more  properly  named  Sane 
Voting.  This,  which  is  the  only  correct  way,  these 
antagonists  regard  as  a  peculiar  way.  It  has  un- 
familiar features,  and  that  condemns  it  in  their  eyes. 
It  takes  at  least  ten  minutes  to  understand,  and  that 
is  too  much  for  their  plain,  straightforward  souls. 
"Complicated" — that  word  of  fear!  They  are  like 
the  man  who  approved  of  an  electric  tram,  but  said 
that  he  thought  it  would  go  better  without  all  that 
jiggery-pokery  of  wires  up  above.  They  are  like  the 


THE   DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

Western  judge  in  the  murder  trial  who  said  that  if 
only  they  got  a  man  hung  for  the  abominable  crime, 
he  wouldn't  make  a  pedantic  fuss  about  the  question 
of  which  man.  They  are  like  the  plain,  straight- 
forward promoter  who  became  impatient  with  maps 
and  planned  a  railway  across  Switzerland  by  drawing 
a  straight  line  with  a  ruler  across  Jungfrau  and 
Matterhorn,  and  glacier  and  gorge.  Or  else  they  are 
like  Mr.  J.  Ramsay  Macdonald,  M.P.,  who  knows 
too  well  what  would  happen  to  him. 

Now  let  us  consider  what  would  be  the  necessary 
consequences  of  the  establishment  of  Proportional 
Representation  in  such  a  community  as  Great 
Britain — that  is  to  say,  the  redistribution  of  the 
country  into  great  constituencies,  such  as  London  or 
Ulster  or  Wessex  or  South  Wales,  each  returning  a 
score  or  more  of  members,  and  the  establishment  of 
voting  by  the  single  transferable  vote.  The  first, 
immediate,  most  desirable  result  would  be  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  undistinguished  party  candidate; 
he  would  vanish  altogether.  He  would  be  no  more 
seen.  Proportional  Representation  would  not  give 
him  the  ghost  of  a  chance.  The  very  young  man 
of  good  family,  the  subsidised  barrister,  the  respect- 
able nobody,  the  rich  supporter  of  the  party  would 
be  ousted  by  known  men.  No  candidate  who  had 
not  already  distinguished  himself,  and  who  did  not 
stand  for  something  in  the  public  eye,  would  have  a 
chance  of  election.  There  alone  we  have  a  sufficient 
reason  for  anticipating  a  very  thorough  change 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

in  the  quality  and  character  of  the  average  legis- 
lator. 

And  next,  no  party  organisation,  no  intimation 
from  headquarters,  no  dirty  tricks  behind  the  scenes, 
no  conspiracy  of  spite  and  scandal  would  have  much 
chance  of  keeping  out  any  man  of  real  force  and  dis- 
tinction who  had  impressed  the  public  imagination. 
To  be  famous  in  science,  to  have  led  thought,  to  have 
explored  or  administered  or  dissented  courageously 
from  the  schemes  of  official  wire-pullers  would  no 
longer  be  a  bar  to  a  man's  attainment  of  Parliament. 
It  would  be  a  help.  Not  only  the  level  of  parlia- 
mentary intelligence,  but  the  level  of  personal  inde- 
pendence would  be  raised  far  above  its  present 
position.  And  Parliament  would  become  a  gathering 
of  prominent  men  instead  of  a  means  to  prominence. 

The  two-party  system  which  holds  all  the  English- 
speaking  countries  to-day  in  its  grip  would  certainly 
be  broken  up  by  Proportional  Representation.  Sane 
Voting  in  the  end  would  kill  the  Liberal  and  Tory 
and  Democratic  and  Republican  party  machines. 
That  secret  rottenness  of  our  public  life,  that  hidden 
conclave  which  sells  honours,  fouls  finance,  muddles 
public  affairs,  fools  the  passionate  desires  of  the 
people,  and  ruins  honest  men  by  obscure  campaigns 
would  become  impossible.  The  advantage  of  party 
support  would  be  a  doubtful  advantage,  and  in 
Parliament  itself  the  party  men  would  find  them- 
selves outclassed  and  possibly  even  outnumbered  by 
the  independent.  It  would  be  only  a  matter  of  a 

316 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

few  years  between  the  adoption  of  Sane  Voting  and 
the  disappearance  of  the  Cabinet  from  British  public 
life.  It  would  become  possible  for  Parliament  to  get 
rid  of  a  minister  without  getting  rid  of  a  ministry, 
and  to  express  its  disapproval  of — let  us  say — some 
foolish  project  for  rearranging  the  local  government 
of  Ireland  without  opening  the  door  upon  a  vista  of 
fantastical  fiscal  adventures.  The  party-supported 
Cabinet,  which  is  now  the  real  government  of  the 
so-called  democratic  countries,  would  cease  to  be  so, 
and  government  would  revert  more  and  more  to  the 
legislative  assembly.  And  not  only  would  the  latter 
body  resume  government,  but  it  would  also  neces- 
sarily take  into  itself  all  those  large  and  growing 
exponents  of  extra-parliamentary  discontent  that 
now  darken  the  social  future.  The  case  of  the  armed 
"Unionist"  rebel  in  Ulster,  the  case  of  the  workman 
who  engages  in  sabotage,  the  case  for  sympathetic 
strikes  and  the  general  strike,  all  these  cases  are 
identical  in  this,  that  they  declare  Parliament  a 
fraud,  that  justice  lies  outside  it  and  hopelessly  out- 
side it,  and  that  to  seek  redress  through  Parliament 
is  a  waste  of  time  and  energy.  Sane  Voting  would 
deprive  all  these  destructive  movements  of  the  excuse 
and  necessity  for  violence. 

There  is,  I  know,  a  disposition  in  some  quarters 
to  minimise  the  importance  of  Proportional  Repre- 
sentation, as  though  it  were  a  mere  readjustment  of 
voting  methods.  It  is  nothing  of  the  sort;  it  is  a 
prospective  revolution.  It  will  revolutionise  govern- 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ment  far  more  than  a  mere  change  from  kingdom  to 
republic  or  vice  versa  could  possibly  do;  it  will  give 
a  new  and  unprecedented  sort  of  government  to  the 
world.  The  real  leaders  of  the  country  will  govern 
the  country.  For  Great  Britain,  for  example,  instead 
of  the  secret,  dubious  and  dubitable  Cabinet,  which 
is  the  real  British  government  of  to-day,  poised  on 
an  unwieldy  and  crowded  House  of  Commons,  we 
should  have  open  government  by  the  representatives 
of,  let  us  say,  twenty  great  provinces,  Ulster,  Wales, 
London,  for  example,  each  returning  from  twelve  to 
thirty  members.  It  would  be  a  steadier,  stabler, 
more  confident,  and  more  trusted  government  than 
the  world  has  ever  seen  before.  Ministers,  indeed, 
and  even  ministries,  might  come  and  go,  but  that 
would  not  matter,  as  it  does  now,  because  there 
would  be  endless  alternatives  through  which  the 
assembly  could  express  itself  instead  of  the  choice 
between  two  parties. 

The  arguments  against  Proportional  Representa- 
tion that  have  been  advanced  hitherto  are  trivial  in 
comparison  with  its  enormous  advantages.  Implicit 
in  them  all  is  the  supposition  that  public  opinion  is 
at  bottom  a  foolish  thing,  and  that  electoral  methods 
are  to  pacify  rather  than  express  a  people.  It  is 
possibly  true  that  notorious  windbags,  conspicu- 
ously advertised  adventurers,  and  the  heroes  of 
temporary  sensations  may  run  a  considerable  chance 
upon  the  lists.  My  own  estimate  of  the  popular 
wisdom  is  against  the  idea  that  any  vividly  promi- 

318 


THE  DISEASE  OF  PARLIAMENTS 

nent  figure  must  needs  get  in;  I  think  the  public  is 
capable  of  appreciating,  let  us  say,  the  charm  and 
interest  of  Mr.  Sandow  or  Mr.  Jack  Johnson  or 
Mr.  Harry  Lauder  or  Mr.  Evan  Roberts  without 
wanting  to  send  these  gentlemen  into  Parliament. 
And  I  think  that  the  increased  power  that  the  press 
would  have  through  its  facilities  in  making  reputa- 
tions may  also  be  exaggerated.  Reputations  are 
mysterious  things  and  not  so  easily  forced,  and  even 
if  it  were  possible  for  a  section  of  the  Press  to  lime- 
light a  dozen  or  so  figures  up  to  the  legislature,  they 
would  still  have,  I  think,  to  be  interesting,  sympa- 
thetic and  individualised  figures ;  and  at  the  end  they 
would  be  only  half  a  dozen  among  four  hundred 
men  of  a  repute  more  naturally  achieved.  A  third 
objection  is  that  this  reform  would  give  us  group 
politics  and  unstable  government.  It  might  very 
possibly  give  us  unstable  ministries,  but  unstable 
ministries  may  mean  stable  government,  and  such 
stable  ministries  as  that  which  governs  England  at 
the  present  time  may,  by  clinging  obstinately  to 
office,  mean  the  wildest  fluctuations  of  policy.  Mr. 
Ramsay  Macdonald  has  drawn  a  picture  of  the  too- 
representative  Parliament  of  proportional  represen- 
tation, split  up  into  groups  each  pledged  to  specific 
measures  and  making  the  most  extraordinary  treaties 
and  sacrifices  of  the  public  interest  in  order  to  secure 
the  passing  of  these  definite  bills.  But  Mr.  Ramsay 
Macdonald  is  exclusively  a  parliamentary  man;  he 
knows  contemporary  parliamentary  "shop"  as  a 

319 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

clerk  knows  his  "guv'nor,"  and  he  thinks  in  the 
terms  of  his  habitual  life;  he  sees  representatives  only 
as  politicians  financed  from  party  headquarters ;  it  is 
natural  that  he  should  fail  to  see  that  the  quality 
and  condition  of  the  sanely  elected  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment will  be  quite  different  from  these  scheming 
climbers  into  positions  of  trust  with  whom  he  deals 
to-day.  It  is  the  party  system  based  on  insane 
voting  that  makes  governments  indivisible  wholes 
and  gives  the  group  and  the  cave  their  terrors  and 
their  effectiveness.  Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald  is  as 
typical  a  product  of  existing  electoral  methods  as  one 
could  well  have,  and  his  peculiarly  keen  sense  of  the 
power  of  intrigue  in  legislation  is  as  good  evidence 
as  one  could  wish  for  of  the  need  of  drastic  change. 
Of  course,  Sane  Voting  is  not  a  short  cut  to  the 
millennium,  it  is  no  way  of  changing  human  nature, 
and  in  the  new  type  of  assembly,  as  in  the  old,  spite, 
vanity,  indolence,  self-interest,  and  downright  dis- 
honesty will  play  their  part.  But  to  object  to  a 
reform  on  that  account  is  not  a  particularly  effective 
objection.  These  things  will  play  their  part,  but  it 
will  be  a  much  smaller  part  in  the  new  than  in  the 
old.  It  is  like  objecting  to  some  projected  and  long- 
needed  railway  because  it  does  not  propose  to  carry 
its  passengers  by  immediate  express  to  heaven. 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

fi 

THE  social  conditions  and  social  future  of  America 
constitute  a  system  of  problems  quite  distinct  and 
separate  from  the  social  problems  of  any  other  part 
of  the  world.  The  nearest  approach  to  parallel 
conditions,  and  that  on  a  far  smaller  and  narrower 
scale,  is  found  in  the  British  colonies  and  in  the  newly 
settled  parts  of  Siberia.  For  while  in  nearly  every 
other  part  of  the  world  the  population  of  to-day  is 
more  or  less  completely  descended  from  the  pre- 
historic population  of  the  same  region,  and  has 
developed  its  social  order  in  a  slow  growth  extend- 
ing over  many  centuries,  the  American  population 
is  essentially  a  transplanted  population,  a  still  fluid 
and  imperfect  fusion  of  great  fragments  torn  at  this 
point  or  that  from  the  gradually  evolved  societies  of 
Europe.  The  European  social  systems  grow  and 
flower  upon  their  roots,  in  soil  which  has  made  them 
and  to  which  they  are  adapted.  The  American  so- 
cial accumulation  is  a  various  collection  of  cuttings 
thrust  into  a  new  soil  and  respiring  a  new  air,  so 
different  that  the  question  is  still  open  to  doubt,  and 
indeed  there  are  those  who  do  doubt,  how  far  these 

321 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

cuttings  are  actually  striking  root  and  living  and 
growing,  whether  indeed  they  are  destined  to  more 
than  a  temporary  life  in  the  new  hemisphere.  I 
propose  to  discuss  and  weigh  certain  arguments  for 
and  against  the  belief  that  these  eighty  million  people 
who  constitute  the  United  States  of  America  are 
destined  to  develop  into  a  great  distinctive  nation 
with  a  character  and  culture  of  its  own. 

Humanly  speaking,  the  United  States  of  America 
(and  the  same  is  true  of  Canada  and  all  the  more 
prosperous,  populous  and  progressive  regions  of 
South  America)  is  a  vast  sea  of  newly  arrived  and 
unstably  rooted  people.  Of  the  seventy-six  million 
inhabitants  recorded  by  the  1900  census,  ten  and  a 
half  million  were  born  and  brought  up  in  one  or  other 
of  the  European  social  systems,  and  the  parents  of 
another  twenty-six  millions  were  foreigners.  Another 
nine  million  are  of  African  negro  descent.  Fourteen 
million  of  the  sixty-five  million  native-born  are  living 
not  in  the  state  of  their  birth,  but  in  other  states  to 
which  they  have  migrated.  Of  the  thirty  and  a  half 
million  whites  whose  parents  on  both  sides  were 
native  Americans,  a  high  proportion  probably  had 
one  if  not  more  grandparents  foreign-born.  Nearly 
five  and  a  half  million  out  of  thirty-three  and  a  half 
million  whites  in  1870  were  foreign-born,  and  another 
five  and  a  quarter  million  the  children  of  foreign-born 
parents.  The  children  of  the  latter  five  and  a  quarter 
million  count,  of  course,  in  the  1900  census  as  native- 
born  of  native  parents.  Immigration  varies  enor- 

322 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

mously  with  the  activity  of  business,  but  in  1906  it 
rose  for  the  first  time  above  a  million. 

These  figures  may  be  difficult  to  grasp.  The  facts 
may  be  seen  in  a  more  concrete  form  by  the  visitor 
to  Ellis  Island,  the  receiving  station  for  the  immi- 
grants into  New  York  Harbour.  One  goes  to  this 
place  by  tugs  from  the  United  States  barge  office  in 
Battery  Park,  and  in  order  to  see  the  thing  properly 
one  needs  a  letter  of  introduction  to  the  Commis- 
sioner in  charge.  Then  one  is  taken  through  vast 
barracks  littered  with  people  of  every  European  race, 
every  type  of  low-class  European  costume,  and  every 
degree  of  dirtiness,  to  a  central  hall  in  which  the  gist 
of  the  examining  goes  on:  The  floor  of  this  hall  is 
divided  up  into  a  sort  of  maze  of  winding  passages 
between  latticework,  and  along  these  passages,  day 
after  day,  incessantly,  the  immigrants  go,  wild-eyed 
Gipsies,  Armenians,  Greeks,  Italians,  Ruthenians, 
Cossacks,  German  peasants,  Scandinavians,  a  few 
Irish  still,  impoverished  English,  occasional  Dutch; 
they  halt  for  a  moment  at  little  desks  to  exhibit 
papers,  at  other  little  desks  to  show  their  money  and 
prove  they  are  not  paupers,  to  have  their  eyes 
scanned  by  this  doctor  and  their  general  bearing  by 
that.  Their  thumb-marks  are  taken,  their  names 
and  heights  and  weights  and  so  forth  are  recorded 
for  the  card  index;  and  so,  slowly,  they  pass  along 
towards  America,  and  at  last  reach  a  little  wicket, 
the  gate  of  the  New  World.  Through  this  metal 
wicket  drips  the  immigration  stream — all  day  long, 

323 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

every  two  or  three  seconds,  an  immigrant,  with  a 
valise  or  a  bundle,  passes  the  little  desk  and  goes  on 
past  the  well-managed  money-changing  place,  past 
the  carefully  organised  separating  ways  that  go  to 
this  railway  or  that,  past  the  guiding,  protecting 
officials — into  a  new  world.  The  great  majority  are 
young  men  and  young  women  between  seventeen  and 
thirty,  good,  youthful,  hopeful  peasant  stock.  They 
stand  in  a  long  string,  waiting  to  go  through  that 
wicket,  with  bundles,  with  little  tin  boxes,  with  cheap 
portmanteaus,  with  odd  packages,  in  pairs,  in 
families,  alone,  women  with  children,  men  with 
strings  of  dependants,  young  couples.  All  day  that 
string  of  human  beads  waits  there,  jerks  forward, 
waits  again;  all  day  and  every  day,  constantly  re- 
plenished, constantly  dropping  the  end  beads  through 
the  wicket,  till  the  units  mount  to  hundreds  and  the 
hundreds  to  thousands.  ...  In  such  a  prosperous 
year  as  1906  more  immigrants  passed  through  that 
wicket  into  America  than  children  were  born  in  the 
whole  of  France. 

This  figure  of  a  perpetual  stream  of  new  stranger 
citizens  will  serve  to  mark  the  primary  distinction 
between  the  American  social  problem  and  that  of 
any  European  or  Asiatic  community. 

The  vast  bulk  of  the  population  of  the  United 
States  has,  in  fact,  only  got  there  from  Europe  in 
the  course  of  the  last  hundred  years,  and  mainly 
since  the  accession  of  Queen  Victoria  to  the  throne 
of  Great  Britain.  That  is  the  first  fact  that  the 

324 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

student  of  the  American  social  future  must  realise. 
Only  an  extremely  small  proportion  of  its  blood  goes 
back  now  to  those  who  fought  for  freedom  in  the 
days  of  George  Washington.  The  American  com- 
munity is  not  an  expanded  colonial  society  that  has 
become  autonomous.  It  is  a  great  and  deepening 
pool  of  population  accumulating  upon  the  area  these 
predecessors  freed,  and  since  fed  copiously  by  afflu- 
ents from  every  European  community.  Fresh  in- 
gredients are  still  being  added  in  enormous  quantity, 
in  quantity  so  great  as  to  materially  change  the 
racial  quality  in  a  score  of  years.  It  is  particularly 
noteworthy  that  each  accession  of  new  blood  seems 
to  sterilise  its  predecessors.  Had  there  been  no 
immigration  at  all  into  the  United  States,  but  had 
the  rate  of  increase  that  prevailed  in  1810-20  pre- 
vailed to  1900,  the  population,  which  would  then 
have  been  a  purely  native  American  one,  would  have 
amounted  to  a  hundred  million — that  is  to  say,  to 
more  than  twenty-three  million  in  excess  of  the  pres- 
ent total  population.  The  new  waves  are  for  a  time 
amazingly  fecund,  and  then  comes  a  rapid  fall  in  the 
birthrate.  The  proportion  of  colonial  and  early 
republican  blood  in  the  population  is,  therefore, 
probably  far  smaller  even  than  the  figures  I  have 
quoted  would  suggest. 

These  accesses  of  new  population  have  come  in  a 

series  of  waves,  very  much  as  if  successive  reservoirs 

of  surplus  population  in  the  Old  World  had  been 

tapped,  drained  and  exhausted.    First  came  the  Irish 

22  325 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  Germans,  then  Central  Europeans  of  various 
types,  then  Poland  and  Western  Russia  began  to 
pour  out  their  teeming  peoples,  and  more  particu- 
larly their  Jews,  Bohemia,  the  Slavonic  states,  Italy 
and  Hungary  followed,  and  the  latest  arrivals  include 
great  numbers  of  Levantines,  Armenians  and  other 
peoples  from  Asia  Minor  and  the  Balkan  Peninsula. 
The  Hungarian  immigrants  have  still  a  birthrate  of 
forty-six  per  thousand,  the  highest  birthrate  in  the 
world. 

A  considerable  proportion  of  the  Mediterranean 
arrivals,  it  has  to  be  noted,  and  more  especially  the 
Italians,  do  not  come  to  settle.  They  work  for  a 
season  or  a  few  years,  and  then  return  to  Italy. 
The  rest  come  to  stay. 

A  vast  proportion  of  these  accessions  to  the 
American  population  since  1840  has,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  East  European  Jews,  consisted  of  peas- 
antry, mainly  or  totally  illiterate,  accustomed  to  a 
low  standard  of  life  and  heavy  bodily  toil.  For  most 
of  them  the  transfer  to  a  new  country  meant  sever- 
ance from  the  religious  communion  in  which  they  had 
been  bred  and  from  the  servilities  or  subordinations 
to  which  they  were  accustomed.  They  brought 
little  or  no  positive  social  tradition  to  the  synthesis 
to  which  they  brought  their  blood  and  muscle. 

The  earlier  German,  English  and  Scandinavian 
incomers  were  drawn  from  a  somewhat  higher  social 
level,  and  were  much  more  closely  akin  in  habits  and 
faith  to  the  earlier  founders  of  the  Republic. 

326 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

Our  inquiry  is  this:  What  social  structure  is  this 
pool  of  mixed  humanity  developing  or  likely  to 
develop  ? 

§2 

If  we  compare  any  European  nation  with  the 
American,  we  perceive  at  once  certain  broad  differ- 
ences. The  former,  in  comparison  with  the  latter, 
is  evolved  and  organised;  the  latter,  in  comparison 
with  the  former,  is  aggregated  and  chaotic.  In 
nearly  every  European  country  there  is  a  social 
system  often  quite  elaborately  classed  and  defined; 
each  class  with  a  sense  of  function,  with  an  idea  of 
what  is  due  to  it  and  what  is  expected  of  it.  Nearly 
everywhere  you  find  a  governing  class,  aristocratic 
in  spirit,  sometimes  no  doubt  highly  modified  by 
recent  economic  and  industrial  changes,  with  more 
or  less  of  the  tradition  of  a  feudal  nobility,  then  a 
definite  great  mercantile  class,  then  a  large  self- 
respecting  middle  class  of  professional  men,  minor 
merchants,  and  so  forth,  then  a  new  industrial  class 
of  employees  in  the  manufacturing  and  urban  dis- 
tricts, and  a  peasant  population  rooted  to  the  land. 
There  are,  of  course,  many  local  modifications  of  this 
form:  in  France  the  nobility  is  mostly  expropriated; 
in  England,  since  the  days  of  John  Bull,  the  peasant 
has  lost  his  common  rights  and  his  holding,  and  be- 
come an  "agricultural  labourer"  to  a  newer  class  of 
more  extensive  farmer.  But  these  are  differences  in 
detail ;  the  fact  of  the  organisation,  and  the  still  more 

327 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

important  fact  of  the  traditional  feeling  of  organisa- 
tion, remain  true  of  all  these  older  communities. 

And  in  nearly  every  European  country,  though  it 
may  be  somewhat  despoiled  here  and  shorn  of 
exclusive  predominance  there,  or  represented  by  a 
dislocated  "reformed"  member,  is  the  Church,  cus- 
todian of  a  great  moral  tradition,  closely  associated 
with  the  national  universities  and  the  organisation 
of  national  thought.  The  typical  European  town 
has  its  castle  or  great  house,  its  cathedral  or  church, 
its  middle-class  and  lower-class  quarters.  Five  miles 
off  one  can  see  that  the  American  town  is  on  an 
entirely  different  plan.  In  his  remarkable  "Amer- 
ican Scene,"  Mr.  Henry  James  calls  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  Church  as  one  sees  it  and  feels  it  uni- 
versally in  Europe  is  altogether  absent,  and  he  adds 
a  comment  as  suggestive  as  it  is  vague.  Speaking  of 
the  appearance  of  the  Churches,  so  far  as  they  do 
appear  amidst  American  urban  scenery,  he  says: 

"Looking  for  the  most  part  no  more  established  or  seated 
than  a  stopped  omnibus,  they  are  reduced  to  the  inveterate 
bourgeois  level  (that  of  private,  accommodated  pretensions 
merely),  and  fatally  despoiled  of  the  fine  old  ecclesiastical 
arrogance.  .  .  .  The  field  of  American  life  is  as  bare  of  the 
Church  as  a  billiard-table  of  a  centre-piece;  a  truth  that  the 
myriad  little  structures  'attended'  on  Sundays  and  on  the 
'off'  evenings  of  their  'sociables'  proclaim  as  with  the  audible 
sound  of  the  roaring  of  a  million  mice.  .  .  . 

"And  however  one  indicates  one's  impression  of  the  clear- 
ance, the  clearance  itself,  in  its  completeness,  with  the  innumer- 
able odd  connected  circumstances  that  bring  it  home,  represents, 
in  the  history  of  manners  and  morals,  a  deviation  in  the  mere 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

measurement  of  which  hereafter  may  well  reside  a  certain  critical 
thrill.  I  say  hereafter  because  it  is  a  question  of  one  of  those 
many  measurements  that  would  as  yet,  in  the  United  States,  be 
premature.  Of  all  the  solemn  conclusions  one  feels  as  'barred,' 
the  list  is  quite  headed  in  the  States,  I  think,  by  this  particular 
abeyance  of  judgment.  When  an  ancient  treasure  of  precious 
vessels,  overscored  with  glowing  gems  and  wrought  artistically 
into  wondrous  shapes,  has,  by  a  prodigious  process,  been  con- 
verted through  a  vast  community  into  the  small  change,  the 
simple  circulating  medium  of  dollars  and  'nickels,'  we  can  only 
say  that  the  consequent  permeation  will  be  of  values  of  a  new 
order.  Of  what  order  we  must  wait  to  see." 

America  has  no  Church.  Neither  has  it  a  peas- 
antry nor  an  aristocracy,  and  until  well  on  in  the 
Victorian  epoch  it  had  no  disproportionately  rich 
people. 

In  America,  except  in  the  regions  where  the  negro 
abounds,  there  is  no  lower  stratum.  There  is  no 
"soil  people "  to  this  community  at  all;  your  bottom- 
most man  is  a  mobile  freeman  who  can  read,  and  who 
has  ideas  above  digging  and  pigs  and  poultry-keeping, 
except  incidentally  for  his  own  ends.  No  one  owns 
to  subordination.  As  a  consequence,  any  position 
which  involves  the  acknowledgment  of  an  innate 
inferiority  is  difficult  to  fill ;  there  is,  from  the  Euro- 
pean point  of  view,  an  extraordinary  dearth  of  ser- 
vants, and  this  endures  in  spite  of  a  great  peasant 
immigration.  The  servile  tradition  will  not  root 
here  now;  it  dies  forthwith.  An  enormous  importa- 
tion of  European  serfs  and  peasants  goes  on,  but  as 
they  touch  this  soil  their  backs  begin  to  stiffen  with 
a  new  assertion. 

329 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  also,  one  misses 
an  element.  There  is  no  territorial  aristocracy,  no 
aristocracy  at  all,  no  throne,  no  legitimate  and 
acknowledged  representative  of  that  upper  social 
structure  of  leisure,  power  and  State  responsibility 
which  in  the  old  European  theory  of  Society  was 
supposed  to  give  significance  to  the  whole.  The 
American  community,  one  cannot  too  clearly  insist, 
does  not  correspond  to  an  entire  European  commu- 
nity at  all,  but  only  to  the  middle  masses  of  it,  to 
the  trading  and  manufacturing  class  between  the 
dimensions  of  the  magnate  and  the  clerk  and  skilled 
artisan.  It  is  the  central  part  of  the  European 
organism  without  either  the  dreaming  head  or  the 
subjugated  feet.  Even  the  highly  feudal  slave- 
holding  "county  family"  traditions  of  Virginia  and 
the  South  pass  now  out  of  memory.  So  that  in  a 
very  real  sense  the  past  of  the  American  nation  is  in 
Europe,  and  the  settled  order  of  the  past  is  left 
behind  there.  This  community  was,  as  it  were, 
taken  off  its  roots,  clipped  of  its  branches,  and 
brought  hither.  It  began  neither  serf  nor  lord,  but 
burgher  and  fanner;  it  followed  the  normal  develop- 
ment of  the  middle  class  under  Progress  everywhere, 
and  became  capitalistic.  The  huge  later  immigra- 
tion has  converged  upon  the  great  industrial  centres 
and  added  merely  a  vast  non-servile  element  of 
employees  to  the  scheme. 

America  has  been  and  still  very  largely  is  a  one- 
class  country.  It  is  a  great  sea  of  human  beings 

330 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

detached  from  their  traditions  of  origin.  The  social 
difference  from  Europe  appears  everywhere,  and  no- 
where more  strikingly  than  in  the  railway  carriages. 
In  England  the  compartments  in  these  are  either 
"first  class,"  originally  designed  for  the  aristocracy, 
or  "second  class,"  for  the  middle  class,  or  "third 
class,"  for  the  populace.  In  America  there  is  only 
one  class,  one  universal  simple  democratic  car.  In 
the  Southern  States,  however,  a  proportion  of  these 
simple  democratic  cars  are  inscribed  with  the  word 
"White,"  whereby  nine  million  people  are  excluded. 
But  to  this  original  even-handed  treatment  there  was 
speedily  added  a  more  sumptuous  type  of  car,  the 
parlour  car,  accessible  to  extra  dollars;  and  then 
came  special  types  of  train,  all  made  up  of  parlour 
cars  and  observation  ears  and  the  like.  In  England 
nearly  every  train  remains  still  first,  second  and 
third,  or  first  and  third.  And  now,  quite  outdis- 
tancing the  differentiation  of  England,  America  pro- 
duces private  cars  and  private  trains,  such  as  Europe 
reserves  only  for  crowned  heads. 

The  evidence  of  the  American  railways,  then, 
suggests  very  strongly  what  a  hundred  other  signs 
confirm,  that  the  huge  classless  sea  of  American 
population  is  not  destined  to  remain  classless,  is 
already  developing  separations  and  distinctions  and 
structures  of  its  own.  And  monstrous  architectural 
portents  in  Boston  and  Salt  Lake  City  encourage  one 
to  suppose  that  even  that  churchless  aspect,  which  so 
stirred  the  speculative  element  in  Mr.  Henry  James, 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

is  only  the  opening  formless  phase  of  a  community 
destined  to  produce  not  only  classes  but  intellectual 
and  moral  forms  of  the  most  remarkable  kind. 


§3 

o    O 

It  is  well  to  note  how  these  eighty  millions  of  people 
whose  social  future  we  are  discussing  are  distributed. 
This  huge  development  of  human  appliances  and  re- 
sources is  here  going  on  in  a  community  that  is  still, 
for  all  the  dense  crowds  of  New  York,  the  teeming 
congestion  of  East  Side,  extraordinarily  scattered. 
America,  one  recalls,  is  still  an  unoccupied  country 
across  which  the  latest  developments  of  civilisation 
are  rushing.  We  are  dealing  here  with  a  continuous 
area  of  land  which  is,  leaving  Alaska  out  of  account 
altogether,  equal  to  Great  Britain,  France,  the  Ger- 
man Empire,  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire,  Italy, 
Belgium,  Japan,  Holland,  Spain  and  Portugal, 
Sweden  and  Norway,  Turkey  in  Europe,  Egypt  and 
the  whole  Empire  of  India,  and  the  population  spread 
out  over  this  vast  space  is  still  less  than  the  joint 
population  of  the  first  two  countries  named  and  not 
a  quarter  that  of  India. 

Moreover,  it  is  not  spread  at  all  evenly.  Much  of 
it  is  in  undistributed  clots.  It  is  not  upon  the  soil; 
barely  half  of  it  is  in  holdings  and  homes  and  authen- 
tic communities.  It  is  a  population  of  an  extremely 
modern  type.  Urban  concentration  has  already  gone 
far  with  it ;  fifteen  millions  of  it  are  crowded  into  and 

332 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

about  twenty  great  cities,  another  eighteen  millions 
make  up  five  hundred  towns.  Between  these  centres 
of  population  run  railways  indeed,  telegraph  wires, 
telephone  connections,  tracks  of  various  sorts,  but 
to  the  European  eye  these  are  mere  scratchings  on 
a  virgin  surface.  An  empty  wilderness  manifests  itself 
through  this  thin  network  of  human  conveniences, 
appears  in  the  meshes  even  at  the  railroad  side. 

Essentially,  America  is  still  an  unsettled  land,  with 
only  a  few  incidental  good  roads  in  favoured  places, 
with  no  universal  police,  with  no  wayside  inns  where 
a  civilised  man  may  rest,  with  still  only  the  crudest 
of  rural  postal  deliveries,  with  long  stretches  of 
swamp  and  forest  and  desert  by  the  track  side,  still 
unassailed  by  industry.  This  much  one  sees  clearly 
enough  eastward  of  Chicago.  Westward  it  becomes 
more  and  more  the  fact.  In  Idaho,  at  last,  comes 
the  untouched  and  perhaps  invincible  desert,  plain 
and  continuous  through  the  long  hours  of  travel. 
Huge  areas  do  not  contain  one  human  being  to  the 
square  mile,  still  vaster  portions  fall  short  of  two.  .  .  . 

It  is  upon  Pennsylvania  and  New  York  State  and 
the  belt  of  great  towns  that  stretches  out  past 
Chicago  to  Milwaukee  and  Madison  that  the  nation 
centres  and  seems  destined  to  centre.  One  needs  but 
examine  a  tinted  population  map  to  realise  that. 
The  other  concentrations  are  provincial  and  subordi- 
nate; they  have  the  same  relation  to  the  main  axis 
that  Glasgow  or  Cardiff  have  to  London  in  the 
British  scheme. 

333 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

.      14     '^     '      / 

When  I  speak  of  this  vast  multitude,  these  eighty 
millions  of  the  United  States  of  America  as  being  for 
the  most  part  peasants  de-peasant-ised  and  common 
people  cut  off  from  their  own  social  traditions,  I  do 
not  intend  to  convey  that  the  American  community 
is  as  a  whole  traditionless.  There  is  in  America  a 
very  distinctive  tradition  indeed,  which  animates 
the  entire  nation,  gives  a  unique  idiom  to  its  press 
and  all  its  public  utterances,  and  is  manifestly  the 
starting  point  from  which  the  adjustments  of  the 
future  must  be  made. 

The  mere  sight  of  the  stars  and  stripes  serves  to 
recall  it ;  "  Yankee ' '  in  the  mouth  of  a  European  gives 
something  of  its  quality.  One  thinks  at  once  of  a 
careless  abandonment  of  any  pretension,  of  tireless 
energy  and  daring  enterprise,  of  immense  self- 
reliance,  of  a  disrespect  for  the  past  so  complete 
that  a  mummy  is  in  itself  a  comical  object,  and  the 
blowing  out  of  an  ill-guarded  sacred  flame,  a  delight- 
ful jest.  One  thinks  of  the  enterprise  of  the  sky- 
scraper and  the  humour  of  A  Connecticut  Yankee  in 
King  Arthur's  Court,  and  of  Innocents  Abroad.  Its 
dominant  notes  are  democracy,  freedom,  and  con- 
fidence. It  is  religious-spirited  without  superstition, 
consciously  Christian  in  the  vein  of  a  nearly  Unitarian 
Christianity,  fervent  but  broadened,  broadened  as 
a  halfpenny  is  broadened  by  being  run  over  by  an 
express  train,  substantially  the  same,  that  is  to  say, 

334 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

but  with  a  marked  loss  of  outline  and  detail.  It  is 
a  tradition  of  romantic  concession  to  good  and  in- 
offensive women  and  a  high  development  of  that 
personal  morality  which  puts  sexual  continence  and 
alcoholic  temperance  before  any  public  virtue.  It  is 
equally  a  tradition  of  sporadic  emotional  public- 
spiritedness,  entirely  of  the  quality  of  gallantry,  of 
handsome  and  surprising  gifts  to  the  people,  dis- 
interested occupation  of  office  and  the  like.  It  is 
emotionally  patriotic,  hypotheticating  fighting  and 
dying  for  one's  country  as  a  supreme  good  while  in- 
culcating also  that  working  and  living  for  oneself  is 
quite  within  the  sphere  of  virtuous  action.  It  adores 
the  flag  but  suspects  the  State.  One  sees  more 
national  flags  and  fewer  national  servants  in  America 
than  in  any  country  in  the  world.  Its  conception  of 
manners  is  one  of  free  plain-spoken  men  revering 
women  and  shielding  them  from  most  of  the  realities 
of  life,  scornful  of  aristocracies  and  monarchies,  while 
asserting  simply,  directly,  boldly  and  frequently  an 
equal  claim  to  consideration  with  all  other  men.  If 
there  is  any  traditional  national  costume,  it  is  shirt- 
sleeves. And  it  cherishes  the  rights  of  property 
above  any  other  right  whatsoever. 

Such  are  the  details  that  come  clustering  into 
one's  mind  in  response  to  the  phrase,  the  American 
tradition. 

From  the  War  of  Independence  onward  until  our 
own  times  that  tradition,  that  very  definite  ideal,  has 
kept  pretty  steadily  the  same.  It  is  the  image  of  a 

335 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

man  and  not  the  image  of  a  State.  Its  living  spirit 
has  been  the  spirit  of  freedom  at  any  cost,  uncon- 
ditional and  irresponsible.  It  is  the  spirit  of  men 
who  have  thrown  off  a  yoke,  who  are  jealously  re- 
solved to  be  unhampered  masters  of  their  "own."  to 
whom  nothing  else  is  of  anything  but  secondary  im- 
portance. That  was  the  spirit  of  the  English  small 
gentry  and  mercantile  class,  the  comfortable  prop- 
erty owners,  the  Parliamentarians,  in  Stuart  times. 
Indeed  even  earlier,  it  is  very  largely  the  spirit  of 
More's  Utopia.  It  was  that  spirit  sent  Oliver 
Cromwell  himself  packing  for  America,  though  a 
heedless  and  ill-advised  and  unforeseeing  King  would 
not  let  him  go.  It  was  the  spirit  that  made  taxation 
for  public  purposes  the  supreme  wrong  and  provoked 
each  country,  first  the  mother  country  and  then  in 
its  turn  the  daughter  country,  to  armed  rebellion. 
It  has  been  the  spirit  of  the  British  Whig  and  the 
British  Nonconformist  almost  up  to  the  present  day. 
In  the  Reform  Club  of  London,  framed  and  glazed 
over  against  Magna  Charta,  is  the  American  Declara- 
tion of  Independence,  kindred  trophies  they  are  of 
the  same  essentially  English  spirit  of  stubborn 
insubordination.  But  the  American  side  of  it  has 
gone  on  unchecked  by  the  complementary  aspect 
of  the  English  character  which  British  Toryism 
expresses. 

The  War  of  Independence  raised  that  Whig  sus- 
picion of  and  hostility  to  government  and  the  freedom 
of  private  property  and  the  repudiation  of  any  but 

336 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

voluntary  emotional  and  supererogatory  co-operation 
in  the  national  purpose  to  the  level  of  a  religion,  and 
the  American  Constitution,  with  but  one  element  of 
elasticity  in  the  Supreme  Court  decisions,  established 
these  principles  impregnably  in  the  political  struc- 
ture. It  organised  disorganisation.  Personal  free- 
dom, defiance  of  authority,  and  the  stars  and  stripes 
have  always  gone  together  in  men's  minds ;  and  subse- 
quent waves  of  immigration,  the  Irish  fleeing  famine, 
for  which  they  held  the  English  responsible,  and  the 
Eastern  European  Jews  escaping  relentless  perse- 
cutions, brought  a  persuasion  of  immense  public 
wrongs,  as  a  necessary  concomitant  of  systematic 
government,  to  refresh  without  changing  this  defiant 
thirst  for  freedom  at  any  cost. 

In  my  book,  The  Future  in  America,  I  have  tried 
to  make  an  estimate  of  the  working  quality  of  this 
American  tradition  of  unconditional  freedom  for  the 
adult  male  citizen.  I  have  shown  that  from  the 
point  of  view  of  anyone  who  regards  civilisation  as 
an  organisation  of  human  interdependence  and  be- 
lieves that  the  stability  of  society  can  be  secured  only 
by  a  conscious  and  disciplined  co-ordination  of 
effort,  it  is  a  tradition  extraordinarily  and  danger- 
ously deficient  in  what  I  have  called  a  "sense  of  the 
State."  And  by  a  "sense  of  the  State"  I  mean  not 
merely  a  vague  and  sentimental  and  showy  public- 
spiritedness — of  that  the  States  have  enough  and  to 
spare — but  a  real  sustaining  conception  of  the  col- 
lective interest  embodied  in  the  State  as  an  object 

337 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  simple  duty  and  as  a  determining  factor  in  the  life 
of  each  individual.  It  involves  a  sense  of  function 
and  a  sense  of  "place,"  a  sense  of  a  general  responsi- 
bility and  of  a  general  well-being  overriding  the  indi- 
vidual's well-being,  which  are  exactly  the  senses  the 
American  tradition  attacks  and  destroys. 

For  the  better  part  of  a  century  the  American 
tradition,  quite  as  much  by  reason  of  what  it  dis- 
regards as  of  what  it  suggests,  has  meant  a  great 
release  of  human  energy,  a  vigorous  if  rough  and 
untidy  exploitation  of  the  vast  resources  that  the 
European  invention  of  railways  and  telegraphic  com- 
munication put  within  reach  of  the  American  people. 
It  has  stimulated  men  to  a  greater  individual  activ- 
ity, perhaps,  than  the  world  has  ever  seen  before. 
Men  have  been  wasted  by  misdirection  no  doubt, 
but  there  has  been  less  waste  by  inaction  and  lassi- 
tude than  was  the  case  in  any  previous  society. 
Great  bulks  of  things  and  great  quantities  of  things 
have  been  produced,  huge  areas  brought  under  culti- 
vation, vast  cities  reared  in  the  wilderness. 

But  this  tradition  has  failed  to  produce  the  begin- 
nings or  promise  of  any  new  phase  of  civilised  organi- 
sation, the  growths  have  remained  largely  inverte- 
brate and  chaotic,  and,  concurrently  with  its  gift  of 
splendid  and  monstrous  growth,  it  has  also  developed 
portentous  political  and  economic  evils.  No  doubt 
the  increment  of  human  energy  has  been  consider- 
able, but  it  has  been  much  less  than  appears  at  first 
sight.  Much  of  the  human  energy  that  America  has 

338 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

displayed  in  the  last  century  is  not  a  development  of 
new  energy  but  a  diversion.  It  has  been  accom- 
panied by  a  fall  in  the  birthrate  that  even  the 
immigration  torrent  has  not  altogether  replaced.  Its 
insistence  on  the  individual,  its  disregard  of  the  col- 
lective organisation,  its  treatment  of  women  and 
children  as  each  man's  private  concern,  has  had  its 
natural  outcome.  Men's  imaginations  have  been 
turned  entirely  upon  individual  and  immediate  suc- 
cesses and  upon  concrete  triumphs;  they  have  had 
no  regard  or  only  an  ineffectual  sentimental  regard 
for  the  race.  Every  man  was  looking  after  himself, 
and  there  was  no  one  to  look  after  the  future.  Had 
the  promise  of  1815  been  fulfilled,  there  would  now 
be  in  the  United  States  of  America  one  hundred 
million  descendants  of  the  homogeneous  and  free- 
spirited  native  population  of  that  time.  There  is 
not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  more  than  thirty-five  million. 
There  is  probably,  as  I  have  pointed  out,  much  less. 
Against  the  assets  of  cities,  railways,  mines  and 
industrial  wealth  won,  the  American  tradition  has  to 
set  the  price  of  five-and-sixty  million  native  citi- 
zens who  have  never  found  time  to  get  born,  and 
whose  place  is  now  more  or  less  rilled  by  alien 
substitutes.  Biologically  speaking,  this  is  not  a 
triumph  for  the  American  tradition.  It  is,  however, 
very  clearly  an  outcome  of  the  intense  individualism 
of  that  tradition.  Under  the  sway  of  that  it  has 
burnt  its  future  in  the  furnace  to  keep  up  steam. 
The  next  and  necessary  evil  consequent  upon  this 
339 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

exaltation  of  the  individual  and  private  property  over 
the  State,  over  the  race  that  is  and  over  public 
property,  has  been  a  contempt  for  public  service. 
It  has  identified  public  spirit  with  spasmodic  acts  of 
public  beneficence.  The  American  political  ideal 
became  a  Cincinnatus  whom  nobody  sent  for  and 
who  therefore  never  left  his  plough.  There  has 
ensued  a  corrupt  and  undignified  political  life,  speak- 
ing claptrap,  dark  with  violence,  illiterate  and  void 
of  statesmanship  or  science,  forbidding  any  healthy 
social  development  through  public  organisation  at 
home,  and  every  year  that  the  increasing  facilities  of 
communication  draw  the  alien  nations  closer,  deep- 
ening the  risks  of  needless  and  disastrous  wars  abroad. 
And  in  the  third  place  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the 
American  tradition  has  defeated  its  dearest  aims  of 
a  universal  freedom  and  a  practical  equality.  The 
economic  process  of  the  last  half-century,  so  far  as 
America  is  concerned,  has  completely  justified  the 
generalisations  of  Marx.  There  has  been  a  steady 
concentration  of  wealth  and  of  the  reality  as  distin- 
guished from  the  forms  of  power  in  the  hands  of  a 
small  energetic  minority,  and  a  steady  approxima- 
tion of  the  condition  of  the  mass  of  the  citizens  to 
that  of  the  so-called  proletariat  of  the  European  com- 
munities. The  tradition  of  individual  freedom  and 
equality  is,  in  fact,  in  process  of  destroying  the 
realities  of  freedom  and  equality  out  of  which  it  rose. 
Instead  of  the  six  hundred  thousand  families  of  the 
year  1790,  all  at  about  the  same  level  of  property 

340 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

and,  excepting  the  peculiar  condition  of  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  blacks,  with  scarcely  anyone  in  the 
position  of  a  hireling,  we  have  now  as  the  most 
striking,  though  by  no  means  the  most  important, 
fact  in  American  social  life  a  frothy  confusion  of 
millionaires'  families,  just  as  wasteful,  foolish  and 
vicious  as  irresponsible  human  beings  with  unlimited 
resources  have  always  shown  themselves  to  be.  And, 
concurrently  with  the  appearance  of  these  concen- 
trations of  great  wealth,  we  have  appearing  also 
poverty,  poverty  of  a  degree  that  was  quite  unknown 
in  the  United  States  for  the  first  century  of  their 
career  as  an  independent  nation.  In  the  last  few 
decades  slums  as  frightful  as  any  in  Europe  have 
appeared  with  terrible  rapidity,  and  there  has  been 
a  development  of  the  viler  side  of  industrialism,  of 
sweating  and  base  employment  of  the  most  ominous 
kind. 

In  Mr.  Robert  Hunter's  Poverty  one  reads  of  "not 
less  than  eighty  thousand  children,  most  of  whom 
are  little  girls,  at  present  employed  in  the  textile 
mills  of  this  country.  In  the  South  there  are  now 
six  times  as  many  children  at  work  as  there  were 
twenty  years  ago.  Child  labour  is  increasing  yearly 
in  that  section  of  the  country.  Each  year  more  little 
ones  are  brought  in  from  the  fields  and  hills  to  live 
in  the  degrading  and  demoralising  atmosphere  of  the 
mill  towns.  .  .  ." 

Children  are  deliberately  imported  by  the  Italians. 

I  gathered  from  Commissioner  Watchorn  at  Ellis 

23 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Island  that  the  proportion  of  little  nephews  and 
nieces,  friends'  sons  and  so  forth  brought  in  by  them 
is  peculiarly  high,  and  I  heard  him  try  and  condemn 
a  doubtful  case.  It  was  a  particularly  unattractive 
Italian  in  charge  of  a  dull-eyed  little  boy  of  no 
ascertainable  relationship.  .  .  . 

In  the  worst  days  of  cotton-milling  in  England  the 
conditions  were  hardly  worse  than  those  now  existing 
in  the  South.  Children,  the  tiniest  and  frailest,  of 
five  and  six  years  of  age,  rise  in  the  morning  and,  like 
old  men  and  women,  go  to  the  mills  to  do  their  day's 
labour;  and,  when  they  return  home,  "wearily  fling 
themselves  on  their  beds,  too  tired  to  take  off  their 
clothes."  Many  children  work  all  night — "in  the 
maddening  racket  of  the  machinery,  in  an  atmosphere 
insanitary  and  clouded  with  humidity  and  lint." 

"It  will  be  long,"  adds  Mr.  Hunter  in  his  descrip- 
tion, "before  I  forget  the  face  of  a  little  boy  of  six 
years,  with  his  hands  stretched  forward  to  rearrange 
a  bit  of  machinery,  his  pallid  face  and  spare  form 
already  showing  the  physical  effects  of  labour.  This 
child,  six  years  of  age,  was  working  twelve  hours 
a  day." 

From  Mr.  Spargo's  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children  I 
learn  this  much  of  the  joys  of  certain  among  the 
youth  of  Pennsylvania : 

"For  ten  or  eleven  hours  a  day  children  of  ten  and 
eleven  stoop  over  the  chute  and  pick  out  the  slate 
and  other  impurities  from  the  coal  as  it  moves  past 
them.  The  air  is  black  with  coal  dust,  and  the  roar 

342 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

of  the  crushers,  screens  and  rushing  mill-race  of 
coal  is  deafening.  Sometimes  one  of  the  children 
falls  into  the  machinery  and  is  terribly  mangled,  or 
slips  into  the  chute  and  is  smothered  to  death. 
Many  children  are  killed  in  this  way.  Many  others, 
after  a  time,  contract  coal-miners'  asthma  and  con- 
sumption, which  gradually  undermine  their  health. 
Breathing  continually  day  after  day  the  clouds  of 
coal  dust,  their  lungs  become  black  and  choked  with 
small  particles  of  anthracite.  ..." 

In  Massachusetts,  at  Fall  River,  the  Hon.  J.  F. 
Carey  tells  how  little  naked  boys,  free  Americans, 
work  for  Mr.  Borden,  the  New  York  millionaire, 
packing  cloth  into  bleaching  vats,  in  a  bath  of  chem- 
icals that  bleaches  their  little  bodies  like  the  bodies 
of  lepers.  .  .  . 

Altogether  it  would  seem  that  at  least  one  million 
and  a  half  children  are  growing  up  in  the  United 
States  of  America  stunted  and  practically  unedu- 
cated because  of  unregulated  industrialism.  These 
children,  ill-fed,  ill-trained,  mentally  benighted,  since 
they  are  alive  and  active,  since  they  are  an  active  and 
positive  and  not  a  negative  evil,  are  even  more 
ominous  in  the  American  outlook  than  those  five-and- 
sixty  million  of  good  race  and  sound  upbringing  who 
will  now  never  be  born. 

§5 

It  must  be  repeated  that  the  American  tradition 
is  really  the  tradition  of  one  particular  ingredient  in 

343 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

this  great  admixture  and  stirring  up  of  peoples. 
This  ingredient  is  the  Colonial  British,  whose  seven- 
teenth-century Puritanism  and  eighteenth -century 
mercantile  radicalism  and  rationalism  manifestly 
furnished  all  the  stuff  out  of  which  the  American 
tradition  is  made.  It  is  this  stuff  planted  in  virgin 
soil  and  inflated  to  an  immense  and  buoyant  opti- 
mism by  colossal  and  unanticipated  material  prosper- 
ity and  success.  From  that  British  middle-class  tra- 
dition comes  the  individualist  protestant  spirit,  the 
keen  self-reliance  and  personal  responsibility,  the 
irresponsible  expenditure,  the  indiscipline  and  mys- 
tical faith  in  things  being  managed  properly  if  they 
are  only  let  alone.  "State-blindness"  is  the  natural 
and  almost  inevitable  quality  of  a  middle-class  tradi- 
tion, a  class  that  has  been  forced  neither  to  rule  nor 
obey,  which  has  been  concentrated  and  successfully 
concentrated  on  private  gain. 

This  middle-class  British  section  of  the  American 
population  was,  and  is  to  this  day,  the  only  really 
articulate  ingredient  in  its  mental  composition.  And 
so  it  has  had  a  monopoly  in  providing  the  American 
forms  of  thought.  The  other  sections  of  peoples  that 
have  been  annexed  by  or  have  come  into  this  national 
synthesis  are  silent  so  far  as  any  contribution  to  the 
national  stock  of  ideas  and  ideals  is  concerned. 
There  are,  for  example,  those  great  elements,  the 
Spanish  Catholics,  the  French  Catholic  population 
of  Louisiana,  the  Irish  Catholics,  the  French-Cana- 
dians who  are  now  ousting  the  sterile  New-Englander 

344 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

from  New  England,  the  Germans,  the  Italians,  the 
Hungarians.  Comparatively  they  say  nothing.  From 
all  the  ten  million  of  coloured  people  come  just 
two  or  three  platform  voices,  Booker  Washington, 
Dubois,  Mrs.  Church  Terrell,  mere  protests  at  spe- 
cific wrongs.  The  clever,  restless  Eastern  European 
Jews,  too,  have  still  to  find  a  voice.  Professor 
Munsterberg  has  written  with  a  certain  bitterness  of 
the  inaudibility  of  the  German  element  in  the 
American  population.  They  allow  themselves,  he 
remonstrates,  to  count  for  nothing.  They  did  not 
seem  to  exist,  he  points  out,  even  in  politics  until 
prohibitionist  fury  threatened  their  beer.  Then, 
indeed,  the  American  German  emerged  from  silence 
and  obscurity,  but  only  to  rescue  his  mug  and  retire 
again  with  it  into  enigmatical  silence. 

If  there  is  any  exception  to  this  predominance  of 
the  tradition  of  the  English-speaking,  originally 
middle-class,  English-thinking  northerner  in  the 
American  mind,  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  spread  of 
social  democracy  outward  from  the  festering  tene- 
ment houses  of  Chicago  into  the  mining  and  agrarian 
regions  of  the  middle  west.  It  is  a  fierce  form  of 
socialist  teaching  that  speaks  throughout  these 
regions,  far  more  closely  akin  to  the  revolutionary 
Socialism  of  the  continent  of  Europe  than  to  the 
constructive  and  evolutionary  Socialism  of  Great 
Britain.  Its  typical  organ  is  The  Appeal  to  Reason, 
which  circulates  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  million 
copies  weekly  from  Kansas  City.  It  is  a  Socialism 

345 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

reeking  with  class  feeling  and  class  hatred  and  alto- 
gether anarchistic  in  spirit;  a  new  and  highly  indi- 
gestible contribution  to  the  American  moral  and 
intellectual  synthesis.  It  is  remarkable  chiefly  as  the 
one  shrill  exception  in  a  world  of  plastic  acceptance. 

Now  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  this  vast 
silence  of  these  imported  and  ingested  factors  that 
the  American  nation  has  taken  to  itself  is  as  acquies- 
cent as  it  seems.  No  doubt  they  are  largely  taking 
over  the  traditional  forms  of  American  thought  and 
expression  quietly  and  without  protest,  and  wearing 
them;  but  they  will  wear  them  as  a  man  wears  a 
misfit,  shaping  and  adapting  it  every  day  more  and 
more  to  his  natural  form,  here  straining  a  seam  and 
there  taking  in  a  looseness.  A  force  of  modification 
must  be  at  work.  It  must  be  at  work  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that,  with  the  exception  of  social  democracy,  it 
does  not  anywhere  show  as  a  protest  or  a  fresh 
beginning  or  a  challenge  to  the  prevailing  forms. 

How  far  it  has  actually  been  at  work  is,  perhaps, 
to  be  judged  best  by  an  observant  stroller,  surveying 
the  crowds  of  a  Sunday  evening  in  New  York,  or  read 
in  the  sheets  of  such  a  mirror  of  popular  taste  as  the 
Sunday  edition  of  the  New  York  American  or  the 
New  York  Herald.  In  the  former  just  what  I  mean 
by  the  silent  modification  of  the  old  tradition  is  quite 
typically  shown.  Its  leading  articles  are  written  by 
Mr.  Arthur  Brisbane,  the  son  of  one  of  the  Brook 
Farm  Utopians,  that  gathering  in  which  Hawthorne 
and  Henry  James  senior,  and  Margaret  Fuller  par- 

346 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

ticipated,  and  in  which  the  whole  brilliant  world  of 
Boston's  past,  the  world  of  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
Thoreau,  was  interested.  Mr.  Brisbane  is  a  very 
distinguished  man,  quite  over  and  above  the  fact 
that  he  is  paid  the  greatest  salary  of  any  journalist 
in  the  world.  He  writes  with  a  wit  and  directness 
that  no  other  living  man  can  rival,  and  he  holds  up 
constantly  what  is  substantially  the  American  ideal 
of  the  past  century  to  readers  who  evidently  need 
strengthening  in  it.  It  is,  of  course,  the  figure  of  a 
man  and  not  of  a  State;  it  is  a  man,  clean,  clean- 
shaved  and  almost  obtrusively  strong-jawed,  honest, 
muscular,  alert,  pushful,  chivalrous,  self-reliant,  non- 
political  except  when  he  breaks  into  shrewd  and 
penetrating  voting — "you  can  fool  all  the  people 
some  of  the  time,"  etc. — and  independent — inde- 
pendent— in  a  world  which  is  therefore  certain  to  give 
way  to  him. 

His  doubts,  his  questionings,  his  aspirations,  are 
dealt  with  by  Mr.  Brisbane  with  a  simple  direct 
fatherliness,  with  all  the  beneficent  persuasiveness 
of  a  revivalist  preacher.  Millions  read  these  leaders 
and  feel  a  momentary  benefit,  en  route  for  the  more 
actual  portions  of  the  paper.  He  asks:  "Why  are 
all  men  gamblers?"  He  discusses  our  Longing  for 
Immortal  Imperfection,  and  "Did  we  once  live  on  the 
moon?"  He  recommends  the  substitution  of  whisky 
and  soda  for  neat  whisky,  drawing  an  illustration 
from  the  comparative  effect  of  the  diluted  and  of  the 
undiluted  liquid  as  an  eye-wash  ("Try  whisky  on 

347 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

your  friend's  eyeball!"  is  the  heading),  sleep  ("The 
man  who  loses  sleep  will  make  a  failure  of  his  life, 
or  at  least  diminish  greatly  his  chances  of  success"), 
and  the  education  of  the  feminine  intelligence  ("The 
cow  that  kicks  her  weaned  calf  is  all  heart").  He 
makes  identically  the  same  confident  appeal  to  the 
moral  motive  which  was  for  so  long  the  salvation  of 
the  Puritan  individualism  from  which  the  American 
tradition  derives.  "That  hand,"  he  writes,  "which 
supports  the  head  of  the  new-born  baby,  the  mother's 
hand,  supports  the  civilisation  of  the  world." 

But  that  sort  of  thing  is  not  saving  the  old  native 
strain  in  the  population — it  moves  people,  no  doubt, 
but  inadequately.  And  here  is  a  passage  that  is 
quite  the  quintessence  of  Americanism,  of  all  its  deep 
moral  feeling  and  sentimental  untruthfulness.  I 
wonder  if  any  man  but  an  American  or  a  British 
nonconformist  in  a  state  of  rhetorical  excitement  ever 
believed  that  Shakespeare  wrote  his  plays  or  Michael 
Angelo  painted  in  a  mood  of  humanitarian  exultation, 
"for  the  good  of  all  men." 

"What  shall  we  strive  for?    Money? 

"Get  a  thousand  millions.  Your  day  will  come,  and  in  due 
course  the  graveyard  rat  will  gnaw  as  calmly  at  your  bump  of 
acquisitiveness  as  at  the  mean  coat  of  the  pauper. 

"Then  shall  we  strive  for  power? 

"The  names  of  the  first  great  kings  of  the  world  are  forgotten, 
and  the  names  of  all  those  whose  power  we  envy  will  drift  to 
forgetfulness  soon.  What  does  the  most  powerful  man  in  the 
world  amount  to  standing  at  the  brink  of  Niagara,  with  his 
solar  plexus  trembling?  What  is  his  power  compared  with  the 

348 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

force  of  the  wind  or  the  energy  of  one  small  wave  sweeping 
along  the  shore? 

"The  power  which  man  can  build  up  within  himself,  for  him- 
self, is  nothing.  Only  the  dull  reasoning  of  gratified  egotism 
can  make  it  seem  worth  while. 

"Then  what  is  worth  while?  Let  us  look  at  some  of  the  men 
who  have  come  and  gone,  and  whose  lives  inspire  us.  Take  a 
few  at  random: 

"Columbus,  Michael  Angelo,  Wilberforce,  Shakespeare, 
Galileo,  Fulton,  Watt,  Hargreaves — these  will  do. 

"Let  us  ask  ourselves  this  question:  'Was  there  any  one  thing 
that  distinguished  all  their  lives,  that  united  all  these  men,  active 
in  fields  so  different?' 

"Yes.  Every  man  among  them,  and  every  man  whose  life 
history  is  worth  the  telling,  did  something  for  the  good  of 
other  men.  .  .  . 

"Get  money  if  you  can.  Get  power  if  you  can.  Then,  if 
you  want  to  be  more  than  the  ten  thousand  million  unknown 
mingled  in  the  dust  beneath  you,  see  what  good  you  can  do  with 
your  money  and  your  power. 

"  If  you  are  one  of  the  many  millions  who  have  not  and  can't 
get  money  or  power,  see  what  good  you  can  do  without  either. 

"You  can  help  carry  a  load  for  an  old  man.  You  can  en- 
courage and  help  a  poor  devil  trying  to  reform.  You  can  set  a 
good  example  to  children.  You  can  stick  to  the  men  with  whom 
you  work,  fighting  honestly  for  their  welfare. 

"Time  was  when  the  ablest  man  would  rather  kill  ten  men 
than  feed  a  thousand  children.  That  time  has  gone.  We  do 
not  care  much  about  feeding  the  children,  but  we  care  less  about 
killing  the  men.  To  that  extent  we  have  improved  already. 

"The  day  will  come  when  we  shall  prefer  helping  our  neighbour 
to  robbing  him — legally — of  a  million  dollars. 

"  Do  what  good  you  can  now,  while  it  is  unusual,  and  have  the 
satisfaction  of  being  a  pioneer  and  an  eccentric." 

It  is  the  voice  of  the  American  tradition  strained 
to  the  utmost  to  make  itself  audible  to  the  new  world, 

349 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  crackling  into  italics  and  breaking  into  capitals 
with  the  strain.  The  rest  of  that  enormous  bale  of 
paper  is  eloquent  of  a  public  void  of  moral  ambitions, 
lost  to  any  sense  of  comprehensive  things,  dead  to 
ideas,  impervious  to  generalisations,  a  public  which 
has  carried  the  conception  of  freedom  to  its  logical 
extreme  of  entire  individual  detachment.  These 
telltale  columns  deal  all  with  personality  and  the 
drama  of  personal  life.  They  witness  to  no  interest 
but  the  interest  in  intense  individual  experiences. 
The  engagements,  the  love  affairs,  the  scandals  of 
conspicuous  people  are  given  in  pitiless  detail  in 
articles  adorned  with  vigorous  portraits  and  sensa- 
tional pictorial  comments.  Even  the  eavesdroppers 
who  write  this  stuff  strike  the  personal  note,  and  their 
heavily  muscular  portraits  frown  beside  the  initial 
letter.  Murders  and  crimes  are  worked  up  to  the 
keenest  pitch  of  realisation,  and  any  new  indelicacy 
in  fashionable  costume,  any  new  medical  device  or 
cure,  any  new  dance  or  athleticism,  any  new  breach 
in  the  moral  code,  any  novelty  in  sea  bathing  or  the 
woman's  seat  on  horseback,  or  the  like,  is  given 
copious  and  moving  illustration,  stirring  headlines, 
and  eloquent  reprobation.  There  is  a  coloured  sup- 
plement of  knockabout  fun,  written  chiefly  in  the 
quaint  dialect  of  the  New  York  slums.  It  is  a  lan- 
guage from  which  "th"  has  vanished,  and  it  presents 
a  world  in  which  the  kicking  by  a  mule  of  an  endless 
succession  of  victims  is  an  inexhaustible  joy  to  young 
and  old.  "Dat  ole  Maud!"  There  is  a  smaller  bale 

35° 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

dealing  with  sport.  In  the  advertisement  columns 
one  finds  nothing  of  books,  nothing  of  art;  but  great 
choice  of  bust  developers,  hair  restorers,  nervous 
tonics,  clothing  sales,  self-contained  flats,  and  busi- 
ness opportunities.  .  .  . 

Individuality  has,  in  fact,  got  home  to  itself,  and, 
as  people  say,  taken  off  its  frills.  All  but  one;  Mr. 
Arthur  Brisbane's  eloquence  one  may  consider  as  the 
last  stitch  of  the  old  costume, — mere  decoration. 
Excitement  remains  the  residual  object  in  life.  The 
New  York  American  represents  a  clientele  to  be 
counted  by  the  hundred  thousand,  manifestly  with 
no  other  solicitudes,  just  burning  to  live  and  living 
to  burn. 

§6 

The  modifications  of  the  American  tradition  that 
will  occur  through  its  adoption  by  these  silent  foreign 
ingredients  in  the  racial  synthesis  are  not  likely  to 
add  to  it  or  elaborate  it  in  any  way.  They  tend 
merely  to  simplify  it  to  bare  irresponsible  non-moral 
individualism.  It  is  with  the  detail  and  qualification 
of  a  tradition  as  with  the  inflexions  of  a  language; 
when  another  people  takes  it  over  the  refinements 
disappear.  But  there  are  other  forces  of  modifica- 
tion at  work  upon  the  American  tradition  of  an  alto- 
gether more  hopeful  kind.  It  has  entered  upon  a 
constructive  phase.  Were  it  not  so,  then  the  Amer- 
ican social  outlook  would,  indeed,  be  hopeless. 

The  effectual  modifying  force  at  work  is  not  the 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

strangeness  nor  the  temperamental  maladjustment 
of  the  new  elements  of  population,  but  the  conscious 
realisation  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  tradition  on  the 
part  of  the  more  intelligent  sections  of  the  American 
population.  That  blind  national  conceit  that  would 
hear  no  criticism  and  admit  no  deficiency  has  dis- 
appeared. In  the  last  decade  such  a  change  has 
come  over  the  American  mind  as  sometimes  comes 
over  a  vigorous  and  wilful  child.  Suddenly  it  seems 
to  have  grown  up,  to  have  begun  to  weigh  its  powers 
and  consider  its  possible  deficiencies.  There  was  a 
time  when  American  confidence  and  self-satisfaction 
seemed  impregnable ;  at  the  slightest  qualm  of  doubt 
America  took  to  violent  rhetoric  as  a  drunkard  resorts 
to  drink.  Now  the  indictment  I  have  drawn  up 
harshly,  bluntly  and  unflatteringly  in  §  4  would 
receive  the  endorsement  of  American  after  American. 
The  falling  birthrate  of  all  the  best  elements  in  the 
State,  the  cankering  effect  of  political  corruption,  the 
crumbling  of  independence  and  equality  before  the 
progressive  aggregation  of  wealth — he  has  to  face 
them,  he  cannot  deny  them.  There  has  arisen  a  new 
literature,  the  literature  of  national  self-examination, 
that  seems  destined  to  modify  the  American  tradi- 
tion profoundly.  To  me  it  seems  to  involve  the  hope 
and  possibility  of  a  conscious  collective  organisation 
of  social  life. 

If  ever  there  was  an  epoch-marking  book  it  was 
surely  Henry  Demarest  Lloyd's  Wealth  Against 
Commonwealth.  It  marks  an  epoch  not  so  much 

352 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

by  what  it  says  as  by  what  it  silently  abandons.  It 
was  published  in  1894,  and  it  stated  in  the  very 
clearest  terms  the  incompatibility  of  the  almost 
limitless  freedom  of  property  set  up  by  the  constitu- 
tion, with  the  practical  freedom  and  general  happi- 
ness of  the  mass  of  men.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
Lloyd  never  followed  up  the  implications  of  this 
repudiation.  He  made  his  statements  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  tradition  he  assailed,  and  foreshadowed 
the  replacement  of  chaos  by  order  in  quite  chaotic 
and  mystical  appeals.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a 
typical  passage  from  "Man,  the  Social  Creator": 

"Property  is  now  a  stumbling-block  to  the  people,  just  as 
government  has  been.  Property  will  not  be  abolished,  but,  like 
government,  it  will  be  democratised. 

"The  philosophy  of  self-interest  as  the  social  solution  was  a 
good  living  and  working  synthesis  in  the  days  when  civilisation 
was  advancing  its  frontiers  twenty  miles  a  day  across  the  Amer- 
ican continent,  and  every  man  for  himself  was  the  best  social 
mobilisation  possible. 

"But  to-day  it  is  a  belated  ghost  that  has  overstayed  the 
cock-crow.  These  were  frontier  morals.  But  this  same,  every- 
one for  himself,  becomes  most  immoral  when  the  frontier  is 
abolished  and  the  pioneer  becomes  the  fellow-citizen,  and  these 
frontier  morals  are  most  uneconomic  when  labour  can  be  divided 
and  the  product  multiplied.  Most  uneconomic,  for  they  make 
closure  the  rule  of  industry,  leading  not  to  wealth,  but  to  that 
awful  waste  of  wealth  which  is  made  visible  to  every  eye  in  our 
unemployed — not  hands  alone,  but  land,  machinery,  and,  most 
of  all,  hearts.  Those  who  still  practise  these  frontier  morals  are 
like  criminals,  who,  according  to  the  new  science  of  penology, 
are  simply  reappearances  of  old  types.  Their  acquisitiveness, 
once  divine  like  Mercury's,  is  now  out  of  place  except  in  jail. 
Because  out  of  place,  they  are  a  danger.  A  sorry  day  it  is  likely 

353 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

to  be  for  those  who  are  found  in  the  way  when  the  new  people 
rise  to  rush  into  each  other's  arms,  to  get  together,  to  stay  to- 
gether and  to  live  together.  The  labour  movement  halts  be- 
cause so  many  of  its  rank  and  file — and  all  its  leaders — do  not 
see  clearly  the  golden  thread  of  love  on  which  have  been  strung 
together  all  the  past  glories  of  human  association,  and  which  is 
to  serve  for  the  link  of  the  new  Association  of  Friends  who 
Labour,  whose  motto  is  'All  for  all.'" 

The  establishment  of  the  intricate  co-operative 
commonwealth  by  a  rush  of  eighty  million  flushed 
and  shiny-eyed  enthusiasts,  in  fact,  is  Lloyd's  pro- 
posal. He  will  not  face,  and  few  Americans  to  this 
day  will  face,  the  cold  need  of  a  great  science  of  social 
adjustment  and  a  disciplined  and  rightly  ordered 
machinery  to  turn  such  enthusiasms  to  effect.  They 
seem  incurably  wedded  to  gush.  However,  he  did 
express  clearly  enough  the  opening  phase  of  Amer- 
ican disillusionment  with  the  wild  go-as-you-please 
that  had  been  the  conception  of  life  in  America 
through  a  vehement,  wasteful,  expanding  century. 
And  he  was  the  precursor  of  what  is  now  a  bulky 
and  extremely  influential  literature  of  national  criti- 
cism. A  number  of  writers,  literary  investigators 
one  may  call  them,  or  sociological  men  of  letters,  or 
magazine  publicists — they  are  a  little  difficult  to 
place — has  taken  up  the  inquiry  into  the  condition 
of  civic  administration,  into  economic  organisation, 
into  national  politics  and  racial  interaction,  with  a 
frank  fearlessness  and  an  absence  of  windy  eloquence 
that  has  been  to  many  Europeans  a  surprising  revela- 
tion of  the  reserve  forces  of  the  American  mind. 

354 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

President  Roosevelt,  that  magnificent  reverberator 
of  ideas,  that  gleam  of  wilful  humanity,  that  fantastic 
first  interruption  to  the  succession  of  machine-made 
politicians  at  the  White  House,  has  echoed  clearly 
to  this  movement,  and  made  it  an  integral  part  of 
the  general  intellectual  movement  of  America. 

It  is  to  these  first  intimations  of  the  need  of  a 
"sense  of  the  State"  in  America  that  I  would  par- 
ticularly direct  the  reader's  attention  in  this  dis- 
cussion. They  are  the  beginnings  of  what  is  quite 
conceivably  a  great  and  complex  reconstructive 
effort.  I  admit  they  are  but  beginnings.  They  may 
quite  possibly  wither  and  perish  presently;  they  may 
much  more  probably  be  seized  upon  by  adventurers 
and  converted  into  a  new  cant  almost  as  empty  and 
fruitless  as  the  old.  The  fact  remains  that,  through 
this  busy  and  immensely  noisy  confusion  of  nearly  a 
hundred  millions  of  people,  these  little  voices  go 
intimating  more  and  more  clearly  the  intention  to 
undertake  public  affairs  in  a  new  spirit  and  upon  new 
principles,  to  strengthen  the  State  and  the  law 
against  individual  enterprise,  to  have  done  with  those 
national  superstitions  under  which  hypocrisy  and 
disloyalty  and  private  plunder  have  sheltered  and 
prospered  for  so  long. 

Just  as  far  as  these  reform  efforts  succeed  and 
develop  is  the  organisation  of  the  United  States  of 
America  into  a  great,  self-conscious,  civilised  nation, 
unparalleled  in  the  world's  history,  possible;  just  as 
far  as  they  fail  is  failure  written  over  the  American 

355 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

future.  The  real  interest  of  America  for  the  next 
century  to  the  student  of  civilisation  will  be  the 
development  of  these  attempts,  now  in  their  infancy, 
to  create  and  realise  out  of  this  racial  hotchpotch, 
this  human  chaos,  an  idea  of  the  collective  common- 
wealth as  the  datum  of  reference  for  every  individual 
life. 

§7 

I  have  hinted  in  the  last  section  that  there  is  a 
possibility  that  the  new  wave  of  constructive  ideas 
in  American  thought  may  speedily  develop  a  cant  of 
its  own.  But  even  then,  a  constructive  cant  is  better 
than  a  destructive  one.  Even  the  conscious  hypo- 
crite has  to  do  something  to  justify  his  pretences, 
and  the  mere  disappearance  from  current  thought  of 
the  persuasion  that  organisation  is  a  mistake  and 
discipline  needless,  clears  the  ground  of  one  huge 
obstacle  even  if  it  guarantees  nothing  about  the 
consequent  building. 

But,  apart  from  this,  are  there  more  solid  and 
effectual  forces  behind  this  new  movement  of  ideas 
that  makes  for  organisation  in  American  medley  at 
the  present  time? 

The  speculative  writer  casting  about  for  such 
elements  lights  upon  four  sets  of  possibilities  which 
call  for  discussion.  First,  one  has  to  ask:  How  far 
is  the  American  plutocracy  likely  to  be  merely  a 
wasteful  and  chaotic  class,  and  how  far  is  it  likely 
to  become  consciously  aristocratic  and  constructive  ? 

356 


THE  AMERICAN  POPULATION 

Secondly,  and  in  relation  to  this,  what  possibilities 
of  pride  and  leading  are  there  in  the  great  university 
foundations  of  America?  Will  they  presently  begin 
to  tell  as  a  restraining  and  directing  force  upon  public 
thought?  Thirdly,  will  the  growing  American  So- 
cialist movement,  which  at  present  is  just  as  anar- 
chistic and  undisciplined  in  spirit  as  everything  else 
in  America,  presently  perceive  the  constructive  im- 
plications of  its  general  propositions  and  become 
statesmanlike  and  constructive?  And,  fourthly, 
what  are  the  latent  possibilities  of  the  American 
women?  Will  women  as  they  become  more  and 
more  aware  of  themselves  as  a  class  and  of  the  prob- 
lem of  their  sex  become  a  force  upon  the  anarchistic 
side,  a  force  favouring  race-suicide,  or  upon  the  con- 
structive side  which  plans  and  builds  and  bears  the 
future? 

The  only  possible  answer  to  each  one  of  these 
questions  at  present  is  guessing  and  an  estimate. 
But  the  only  way  in  which  a  conception  of  the 
American  social  future  may  be  reached,  lies  through 
their  discussion. 

Let  us  begin  by  considering  what  constructive 
forces  may  exist  in  this  new  plutocracy  which  already 
so  largely  sways  American  economic  and  political 
development.  The  first  impression  is  one  of  extrava- 
gant and  aimless  expenditure,  of  a  class  irresponsible 
and  wasteful  beyond  all  precedent.  One  gets  a 
Zolaesque  picture  of  that  aspect  in  Mr.  Upton  Sin- 
clair's Metropolis,  or  the  fashionable  intelligence 
24  357 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  the  popular  New  York  Sunday  editions,  and  one 
finds  a  good  deal  of  confirmatory  evidence  in  many 
incidental  aspects  of  the  smart  American  life  of  Paris 
and  the  Riviera.  The  evidence  in  the  notorious 
Thaw  trial,  after  one  has  discounted  its  theatrical 
elements,  was  still  a  very  convincing  demonstration 
of  a  rotten  and  extravagant,  because  aimless  and 
functionless,  class  of  rich  people.  But  one  has  to  be 
careful  in  this  matter  if  one  is  to  do  justice  to  the 
facts.  If  a  thing  is  made  up  of  two  elements,  and 
one  is  noisy  and  glaringly  coloured,  and  the  other  is 
quiet  and  colourless,  the  first  impression  created  will 
be  that  the  thing  is  identical  with  the  element  that 
is  noisy  and  glaringly  coloured.  One  is  much  less 
likely  to  hear  of  the  broad  plans  and  the  quality  of 
the  wise,  strong  and  constructive  individuals  in  a 
class  than  of  their  foolish  wives,  their  spendthrift 
sons,  their  mistresses  and  their  moments  of  irritation 
and  folly. 

In  the  making  of  very  rich  men  there  is  always  a 
factor  of  good  fortune  and  a  factor  of  design  and 
will.  One  meets  rich  men  at  times  who  seem  to  be 
merely  lucky  gamblers,  who  strike  one  as  just  the 
thousandth  man  in  a  myriad  of  wild  plungers,  who 
are,  in  fact,  chance  nobodies  washed  up  by  an  eddy. 
Others,  again,  strike  one  as  exceptionally  lucky  half- 
knaves.  But  there  are  others  of  a  growth  more 
deliberate  and  of  an  altogether  higher  personal 
quality.  One  takes  such  men  as  Mr.  J.  D.  Rocke- 
feller or  Mr.  Pierpont  Morgan — the  scale  of  their 

358 


THE   AMERICAN   POPULATION 

fortunes  makes  them  public  property — and  it  is  clear 
that  we  are  dealing  with  persons  on  quite  a  different 
level  of  intellectual  power  from  the  British  Colonel 
Norths,  for  example,  or  the  South  African  Joels. 
In  my  Future  in  America  I  have  taken  the  former 
largely  at  Miss  TarbelTs  estimate,  and  treated  him 
as  a  case  of  acquisitiveness  raised  in  Baptist  sur- 
roundings. But  I  doubt  very  much  if  that  exhausts 
the  man  as  he  is  to-day.  Given  a  man  brought  up 
to  saving  and  "getting  on"  as  if  to  a  religion,  a  man 
very  acquisitive  and  very  patient  and  restrained,  and 
indubitably  with  great  organising  power,  and  he 
grows  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice.  And  hav- 
ing done  so,  there  he  is.  What  is  he  going  to  do? 
Every  step  he  takes  up  the  ascent  to  riches  gives 
him  new  perspectives  and  new  points  of  view. 

It  may  have  appealed  to  the  young  Rockefeller, 
clerk  in  a  Chicago  house,  that  to  be  rich  was  itself  a 
supreme  end;  in  the  first  flush  of  the  discovery  that 
he  was  immensely  rich,  he  may  have  thanked  Heaven 
as  if  for  a  supreme  good,  and  spoken  to  a  Sunday- 
school  gathering  as  if  he  knew  himself  for  the  most 
favoured  of  men.  But  all  that  happened  twenty 
years  ago  or  more.  One  does  not  keep  on  in  that 
sort  of  satisfaction;  one  settles  down  to  the  new 
facts.  And  such  men  as  Mr.  Rockefeller  and  Mr. 
Pierpont  Morgan  do  not  live  in  a  made  and  pro- 
tected world  with  their  minds  trained,  tamed  and 
fed  and  shielded  from  outside  impressions  as  royalties 
do.  The  thought  of  the  world  has  washed  about 

359 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

them;  they  have  read  and  listened  to  the  discussion 
of  themselves  for  some  decades;  they  have  had 
sleepless  nights  of  self-examination.  To  succeed  in 
acquiring  enormous  wealth  does  not  solve  the 
problem  of  life;  indeed,  it  reopens  it  in  a  new  form. 
"What  shall  I  do  with  myself?"  simply  recurs 
again.  You  may  have  decided  to  devote  yourself 
to  getting  on,  getting  wealthy.  Well,  you  have  got 
it.  Now,  again,  comes  the  question:  "What  shall 
I  do?" 

Mr.  Pierpont  Morgan,  I  am  told,  collected  works 
of  art.  I  can  understand  that  satisfying  a  rich 
gentleman  of  leisure,  but  not  a  man  who  has  felt  the 
sensation  of  holding  great  big  things  in  his  great  big 
hands.  Saul,  going  out  to  seek  his  father's  asses, 
found  a  kingdom — and  became  very  spiritedly  a 
king,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  these  big  industrial 
and  financial  organisers,  whatever  in  their  youth  they 
proposed  to  do  or  be,  must  many  of  them  come  to 
realise  that  their  organising  power  is  up  against  no 
less  a  thing  than  a  nation's  future.  Napoleon,  it  is 
curious  to  remember,  once  wanted  to  run  a  lodging- 
house,  and  a  man  may  start  to  corner  oil  and  end 
the  father  of  a  civilisation. 

Now,  I  am  disposed  to  suspect  at  times  that  an 
inkling  of  such  a  realisation  may  have  come  to  some 
of  these  very  rich  men.  I  am  inclined  to  put  it 
among  the  possibilities  of  our  time  that  it  may  pres- 
ently become  clearly  and  definitely  the  inspiring 
idea  of  many  of  those  who  find  themselves  predomi- 

360 


THE   AMERICAN  POPULATION 

nantly  rich.  I  do  not  see  why  these  active  rich 
should  not  develop  statesmanship,  and  I  can  quite 
imagine  them  developing  very  considerable  states- 
manship. Because  these  men  were  able  to  realise 
their  organising  power  in  the  absence  of  economic 
organisation,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  will  be 
fanatical  for  a  continuing  looseness  and  freedom  of 
property.  The  phase  of  economic  liberty  ends 
itself,  as  Marx  long  ago  pointed  out.  The  American 
business  world  becomes  more  and  more  a  managed 
world  with  fewer  and  fewer  wild  possibilities  of 
succeeding.  Of  all  people  the  big  millionaires  should 
realise  this  most  acutely,  and,  in  fact,  there  are 
many  signs  that  they  do.  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
educational  zeal  of  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  and  the 
university  and  scientific  endowments  of  Mr.  Rocke- 
feller are  not  merely  showy  benefactions;  they 
express  a  definite  feeling  of  the  present  need  of  con- 
structive organisation  in  the  social  scheme.  The 
time  has  come  to  build.  There  is,  I  think,  good 
reason  for  expecting  that  statesmanship  of  the  mil- 
lionaires to  become  more  organised  and  scientific 
and  comprehensive  in  the  coming  years.  It  is 
plausible  at  least  to  maintain  that  the  personal 
quality  of  the  American  plutocracy  has  risen  in  the 
last  three  decades,  has  risen  from  the  quality  of  a 
mere  irresponsible  wealthy  person  towards  that  of 
a  real  aristocrat  with  a  "sense  of  the  State."  That 
one  may  reckon  the  first  hopeful  possibility  in  the 
American  outlook. 

361 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

And  intimately  connected  with  this  development 
of  an  attitude  of  public  responsibility  in  the  very  rich 
is  the  decay  on  the  one  hand  of  the  preposterous  idea 
once  prevalent  in  America  that  politics  is  an  unsuit- 
able interest  for  a  "gentleman,"  and  on  the  other 
of  the  democratic  jealousy  of  any  but  poor  politi- 
cians. In  New  York  they  talk  very  much  of 
"gentlemen,"  and  by  "gentlemen"  they  seem  to 
mean  a  rich  man  "in  society"  with  a  college  educa- 
tion. Nowadays,  "gentlemen"  seem  more  and 
more  disposed  towards  politics,  and  less  and  less 
towards  a  life  of  business  or  detached  refinement. 
President  Roosevelt,  for  example,  was  one  of  the 
pioneers  in  this  new  development,  this  restoration 
of  virility  to  the  gentlemanly  ideal.  His  career 
marks  the  appearance  of  a  new  and  better  type  of 
man  in  American  politics,  the  close  of  the  rule  of 
the  idealised  nobody. 

The  prophecy  has  been  made  at  times  that  the 
United  States  might  develop  a  Caesarism,  and  cer- 
tainly the  position  of  president  might  easily  become 
that  of  an  imperator.  No  doubt  in  the  event  of  an 
acute  failure  of  the  national  system  such  a  catastro- 
phe might  occur,  but  the  more  hopeful  and  probable 
line  of  development  is  one  in  which  a  conscious  and 
powerful,  if  informal,  aristocracy  will  play  a  large 
part.  It  may,  indeed,  never  have  any  of  the  out- 
ward forms  of  an  aristocracy  or  any  definite  public 
recognition.  The  Americans  are  as  chary  of  the 
coronet  and  the  known  aristocratic  titles  as  the 

362 


THE   AMERICAN   POPULATION 

Romans  were  of  the  word  King.  Octavius,  for  that 
reason,  never  called  himself  king  nor  Italy  a  kingdom. 
He  was  just  the  Caesar  of  the  Republic,  and  the 
Empire  had  been  established  for  many  years  before 
the  Romans  fully  realised  that  they  had  returned 
to  monarchy. 

§8 

The  American  universities  are  closely  connected  in 
their  development  with  the  appearance  and  growing 
class-consciousness  of  this  aristocracy  of  wealth. 
The  fathers  of  the  country  certainly  did  postulate  a 
need  of  universities,  and  in  every  state  Congress  set 
aside  public  lands  to  furnish  a  university  with  ma- 
terial resources.  Every  State  possesses  a  university, 
though  in  many  instances  these  institutions  are  in  the 
last  degree  of  feebleness.  In  the  days  of  sincere 
democracy  the  starvation  of  government  and  the 
dislike  of  all  manifest  inequalities  involved  the 
starvation  of  higher  education.  Moreover,  the 
entirely  artificial  nature  of  the  State  boundaries, 
representing  no  necessary  cleavages  and  traversed 
haphazard  by  the  lines  of  communication,  made 
some  of  these  State  foundations  unnecessary  and 
others  inadequate  to  a  convergent  demand.  From 
the  very  beginning,  side  by  side  with  the  State 
universities,  were  the  universities  founded  by  bene- 
factors; and  with  the  evolution  of  new  centres  of 
population,  new  and  extremely  generous  plutocratic 
endowments  appeared.  The  dominant  universities 

363 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  America  to-day,  the  treasure  houses  of  intellectual 
prestige,  are  almost  all  of  them  of  plutocratic  origin, 
and  even  in  the  State  universities,  if  new  resources 
are  wanted  to  found  new  chairs,  to  supply  funds  for 
research  or  publication  or  what  not,  it  is  to  the  more 
State-conscious  wealthy  and  not  to  the  State  legis- 
lature that  the  appeal  is  made  almost  as  a  matter 
of  course.  The  common  voter,  the  small  indi- 
vidualist, has  less  constructive  imagination — is  more 
individualistic,  that  is,  than  the  big  individualist. 

This  great  network  of  universities  that  is  now 
spread  over  the  States,  interchanging  teachers,  litera- 
ture and  ideas,  and  educating  not  only  the  profes- 
sions but  a  growing  proportion  of  business  leaders 
and  wealthy  people,  must  necessarily  take  an  im- 
portant part  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  American 
tradition  that  is  now  in  progress.  It  is  giving  a 
large  and  increasing  amount  of  attention  to  the 
subjects  that  bear  most  directly  upon  the  peculiar 
practical  problems  of  statecraft  in  America,  to 
psychology,  sociology  and  political  science.  It  is 
influencing  the  press  more  and  more  directly  by 
supplying  a  rising  proportion  of  journalists  and 
creating  an  atmosphere  of  criticism  and  suggestion. 
It  is  keeping  itself  on  the  one  hand  in  touch  with 
the  popular  literature  of  public  criticism  in  those  new 
and  curious  organs  of  public  thought,  the  ten-cent 
magazines;  and  on  the  other  it  is  making  a  con- 
stantly more  solid  basis  of  common  understanding 
upon  which  the  newer  generation  of  plutocrats  may 

364 


THE  AMERICAN   POPULATION 

meet.  That  older  sentimental  patriotism  must  be 
giving  place  under  its  influence  to  a  more  definite 
and  effectual  conception  of  a  collective  purpose.  It 
is  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  influence  of  sustained 
scientific  study  in  the  universities,  and  a  growing 
increase  of  the  college-trained  element  in  the  popu- 
lation that  we  must  look  if  we  are  to  look  anywhere 
for  the  new  progressive  methods,  for  the  substitution 
of  persistent,  planned  and  calculated  social  develop- 
ment for  the  former  conditions  of  systematic  neglect 
and  corruption  in  public  affairs  varied  by  epileptic 
seizures  of  "Reform." 

§9 

A  third  influence  that  may  also  contribute  very 
materially  to  the  reconstruction  of  the  American 
tradition  is  the  Socialist  movement.  It  is  true  that 
so  far  American  Socialism  has  very  largely  taken  an 
Anarchistic  form,  has  been,  in  fact,  little  more  than 
a  revolutionary  movement  of  the  wages-earning 
class  against  the  property  owner.  It  has  already 
been  pointed  out  that  it  derives  not  from  contem- 
porary English  Socialism,  but  from  the  Marxist  social 
democracy  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  has  not 
even  so  much  of  the  constructive  spirit  as  has  been 
developed  by  the  English  Socialists  of  the  Fabian 
and  Labour  Party  group  or  by  the  newer  German 
evolutionary  Socialists.  Nevertheless,  whenever  So- 
cialism is  intelligently  met  by  discussion  or  whenever 
it  draws  near  to  practicable  realisation,  it  becomes, 

365 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

by  virtue  of  its  inherent  implications,  a  constructive 
force,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  it  will 
not  be  intelligently  met  on  the  whole  and  in  the  long 
run  iii  America.  The  alternative  to  a  developing 
Socialism  among  the  labouring  masses  in  America  is 
that  revolutionary  Anarchism  from  which  it  is  slow- 
ly but  definitely  marking  itself  off.  In  America  we 
have  to  remember  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  huge 
population  of  people  who  are  for  the  most  part,  and 
more  and  more  evidently  destined  under  the  present 
system  of  free  industrial  competition,  to  be  either 
very  small  traders,  small  farmers  on  the  verge  of 
debt,  or  wages-earners  for  all  their  lives.  They  are 
going  to  lead  limited  lives  and  worried  lives — and 
they  know  it.  Nearly  everyone  can  read  and  dis- 
cuss now,  the  process  of  concentrating  property  and 
the  steady  fixation  of  conditions  that  were  once 
fluid  and  adventurous  goes  on  in  the  daylight  visibly 
to  everyone.  And  it  has  to  be  borne  in  mind  also 
that  these  people  are  so  far  under  the  sway  of  the 
American  tradition  that  each  thinks  himself  as  good 
as  any  man  and  as  much  entitled  to  the  fullness  of 
life.  Whatever  social  tradition  their  fathers  had, 
whatever  ideas  of  a  place  to  be  filled  humbly  and 
seriously  and  duties  to  be  done,  have  been  left  behind 
in  Europe.  No  Church  dominates  the  scenery  of 
this  new  land,  and  offers  in  authoritative  and  con- 
vincing tones  consolations  hereafter  for  lives  ob- 
scurely but  faithfully  lived.  Whatever  else  happens 
in  this  national  future,  upon  one  point  the  patriotic 

366 


THE   AMERICAN   POPULATION 

American  may  feel  assured,  and  that  is  of  an  im- 
mense general  discontent  in  the  working  class  and 
of  a  powerful  movement  in  search  of  a  general 
betterment.  The  practical  forms  and  effects  of  that 
movement  will  depend  almost  entirely  upon  the 
average  standard  of  life  among  the  workers  and  their 
general  education.  Sweated  and  ill-organised  for- 
eigners, such  as  one  finds  in  New  Jersey  living  under 
conditions  of  great  misery,  will  be  fierce,  impatient 
and  altogether  dangerous.  They  will  be  acutely 
exasperated  by  every  picture  of  plutocratic  luxury 
in  their  newspaper,  they  will  readily  resort  to  de- 
structive violence.  The  Western  miner,  the  Western 
agriculturist,  worried  beyond  endurance  between  the 
money-lender  and  railway  combinations,  will  be  al- 
most equally  prone  to  savage  methods  of  expression. 
T\ie  Appeal  to  Reason,  for  example,  to  which  I  have 
made  earlier  reference  in  this  chapter,  is  furious  to 
wreck  the  present  capitalistic  system,  but  it  is  far 
too  angry  and  impatient  for  that  satisfaction  to 
produce  any  clear  suggestion  of  what  shall  replace  it. 
To  call  this  discontent  of  the  seething  underside 
of  the  American  system  Socialism  is  a  misnomer. 
Were  there  no  Socialism  there  would  be  just  as 
much  of  this  discontent,  just  the  same  insurgent 
force  and  desire  for  violence,  taking  some  other  title 
and  far  more  destructive  methods.  This  discontent 
is  a  part  of  the  same  planless  confusion  that  gives  on 
the  other  side  the  wanton  irresponsible  extravagances 
of  the  smart  people  of  New  York.  But  Socialism 

367 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

alone,  of  all  the  forms  of  expression  adopted  by  the 
losers  in  the  economic  struggle,  contains  constructive 
possibilities  and  leads  its  adherents  towards  that  ideal 
of  an  organised  State,  planned  and  developed,  from 
which  these  terrible  social  stresses  may  be  elimi- 
nated, which  is  also  the  ideal  to  which  sociology  and 
the  thoughts  of  every  constructive-minded  and  fore- 
seeing man  in  any  position  of  life  tend  to-day.  In 
the  Socialist  hypothesis  of  collective  ownership  and 
administration  as  the  social  basis,  there  is  the  germ 
of  a  "sense  of  the  State"  that  may  ultimately  develop 
into  comprehensive  conceptions  of  social  order,  con- 
ceptions upon  which  enlightened  millionaires  and 
unenlightened  workers  may  meet  at  last  in  generous 
and  patriotic  co-operation. 

The  chances  of  the  American  future,  then,  seem 
to  range  between  two  possibilities  just  as  a  more  or 
less  constructive  Socialism  does  or  does  not  get 
hold  of  and  inspire  the  working  mass  of  the  popu- 
lation. In  the  worst  event — given  an  emotional  and 
empty  hostility  to  property  as  such,  masquerading 
as  Socialism — one  has  the  prospect  of  a  bitter  and 
aimless  class  war  between  the  expropriated  many  and 
the  property-holding  few,  a  war  not  of  general  insur- 
rection but  of  localised  outbreaks,  strikes  and  brutal 
suppressions,  a  war  rising  to  bloody  conflicts  and 
sinking  to  coarsely  corrupt  political  contests,  in 
which  one  side  may  prevail  in  one  locality  and  one 
in  another,  and  which  may  even  develop  into  a 
chronic  civil  war  in  the  less-settled  parts  of  the 

368 


THE  AMERICAN    POPULATION 

country  or  an  irresistible  movement  for  secession 
between  West  and  East.  That  is  assuming  the  great- 
est imaginable  vehemence  and  short-sighted  selfish- 
ness and  the  least  imaginable  intelligence  on  the  part 
of  both  workers  and  the  plutocrat-swayed  govern- 
ment. But  if  the  more  powerful  and  educated 
sections  of  the  American  community  realise  in  time 
the  immense  moral  possibilities  of  the  Socialist  move- 
ment, if  they  will  trouble  to  understand  its  good  side 
instead  of  emphasising  its  bad,  if  they  will  keep  in 
touch  with  it  and  help  in  the  development  of  a  con- 
structive content  to  its  propositions,  then  it  seems 
to  me  that  popular  Socialism  may  count  as  a  third 
great  factor  in  the  making  of  the  civilised  American 
State. 

In  any  case,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  probable  that 
there  can  be  any  national  revolutionary  movement 
or  any  complete  arrest  in  the  development  of  an 
aristocratic  phase  in  American  history.  The  area 
of  the  country  is  too  great  and  the  means  of  com- 
munication between  the  workers  in  different  parts 
inadequate  for  a  concerted  rising  or  even  for  effective 
political  action  in  mass.  In  the  worst  event — and  it 
is  only  in  the  worst  event  that  a  great  insurrectionary 
movement  becomes  probable — the  newspapers,  mag- 
azines, telephones  and  telegraphs,  all  the  apparatus 
of  discussion  and  popular  appeal,  the  railways, 
arsenals,  guns,  flying  machines,  and  all  the  material 
of  warfare,  will  be  in  the  hands  of  the  property 
owners,  and  the  average  of  betrayal  among  the 

369 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

leaders  of  a  class,  not  racially  homogeneous,  em- 
bittered, suspicious,  united  only  by  their  discomforts 
and  not  by  any  constructive  intentions,  will  neces- 
sarily be  high.  So  that,  though  the  intensifying 
trouble  between  labour  and  capital  may  mean  im- 
mense social  disorganisation  and  lawlessness,  though 
it  may  even  supply  the  popular  support  in  new  at- 
tempts at  secession,  I  do  not  see  in  it  the  possibility 
and  force  for  that  new  start  which  the  revolutionary 
Socialists  anticipate;  I  see  it  merely  as  one  of  several 
forces  making,  on  the  whole  and  particularly  in  view 
of  the  possible  mediatory  action  of  the  universities, 
for  construction  and  reconciliation. 

§  10 

What  changes  are  likely  to  occur  in  the  more 
intimate  social  life  of  the  people  of  the  United 
States  ?  Two  influences  are  at  work  that  may  modify 
this  profoundly.  One  is  that  spread  of  knowledge 
and  that  accompanying  change  in  moral  attitude 
which  is  more  and  more  sterilising  the  once  prolific 
American  home,  and  the  second  is  the  rising  standard 
of  feminine  education.  There  has  arisen  in  this  age 
a  new  consciousness  in  women.  They  are  entering 
into  the  collective  thought  to  a  degree  unprecedented 
in  the  world's  history,  and  with  portents  at  once  dis- 
quieting and  confused. 

In  §  5  I  enumerated  what  I  called  the  silent  factors 
in  the  American  synthesis,  the  immigrant  European 


THE   AMERICAN    POPULATION 

aliens,  the  Catholics,  the  coloured  blood,  and  so  forth. 
I  would  now  observe  that,  in  the  making  of  the 
American  tradition,  the  women  also  have  been  to  a 
large  extent,  and  quite  remarkably,  a  silent  factor. 
That  tradition  is  not  only  fundamentally  middle- 
class  and  English,  but  it  is  also  fundamentally  mas- 
culine. The  citizen  is  the  man.  The  woman  be- 
longs to  him.  He  votes  for  her,  works  for  her,  does 
all  the  severer  thinking  for  her.  She  is  in  the  home 
behind  the  shop  or  in  the  dairy  at  the  farmhouse 
with  her  daughters.  She  gets  the  meal  while  the 
men  talk.  The  American  imagination  and  American 
feeling  centre  largely  upon  the  family  and  upon 
1 '  mother. ' '  American  ideals  are  homely.  The  social 
unit  is  the  home,  and  it  is  another  and  a  different 
set  of  influences  and  considerations  that  are  never 
thought  of  at  all  when  the  home  sentiment  is  under 
discussion,  that,  indeed,  it  would  be  indelicate  to 
mention  at  such  a  time,  which  are  making  that  social 
unit  the  home  of  one  child  or  of  no  children  at  all. 
That  ideal  of  a  man-owned,  mother-revering  home 
has  been  the  prevalent  American  ideal  from  the 
landing  of  the  Mayflower  right  down  to  the  leader- 
writing  of  Mr.  Arthur  Brisbane.  And  it  is  clear  that 
a  very  considerable  section  among  one's  educated 
women  contemporaries  do  not  mean  to  stand  this 
ideal  any  longer.  They  do  not  want  to  be  owned 
and  cherished,  and  they  do  not  want  to  be  revered. 
How  far  they  represent  their  sex  in  this  matter  it  is 
very  hard  to  say.  In  England  in  the  professional 

37i 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

and  most  intellectually  active  classes  it  is  scarcely 
an  exaggeration  to  say  that  all  the  most  able  women 
below  five-and- thirty  are  workers  for  the  suffrage  and 
the  ideal  of  equal  and  independent  citizenship,  and 
active  critics  of  the  conventions  under  which  women 
live  to-day.  It  is  at  least  plausible  to  suppose  that 
a  day  is  approaching  when  the  alternatives  between 
celibacy  or  a  life  of  economic  dependence  and  physical 
subordination  to  a  man  who  has  chosen  her,  and  upon 
whose  kindness  her  happiness  depends,  or  prostitu- 
tion, will  no  longer  be  a  satisfactory  outlook  for  the 
great  majority  of  women,  and  when,  with  a  newly 
aroused  political  consciousness,  they  will  be  prepared 
to  exert  themselves  as  a  class  to  modify  this  situation. 
It  may  be  that  this  is  incorrect,  and  that  in  devotion 
to  an  accepted  male  and  his  children  most  women 
do  still  and  will  continue  to  find  their  greatest  satis- 
faction in  life.  But  it  is  the  writer's  impression  that 
so  simple  and  single-hearted  a  devotion  is  rare,  and 
that,  released  from  tradition — and  education,  read- 
ing and  discussion  do  mean  release  from  tradition — 
women  are  as  eager  for  initiative,  freedom  and 
experience  as  men.  In  that  case  they  will  persist  in 
the  present  agitation  for  political  rights,  and  these 
secured,  go  on  to  demand  a  very  considerable  recon- 
struction of  our  present  social  order. 

It  is  interesting  to  point  the  direction  in  which  this 
desire  for  independence  will  probably  take  them. 
They  will  discover  that  the  dependence  of  women  at 
the  present  time  is  not  so  much  a  law-made  as  an 

372 


THE   AMERICAN    POPULATION 

economic  dependence  due  to  the  economic  disadvan- 
tages their  sex  imposes  upon  them.  Maternity  and 
the  concomitants  of  maternity  are  the  circumstances 
in  their  lives,  exhausting  energy  and  earning  nothing, 
that  place  them  at  a  discount.  From  the  stage  when 
property  ceased  to  be  chiefly  the  creation  of  feminine 
agricultural  toil  (the  so-called  primitive  matriar- 
chate)  to  our  present  stage,  women  have  had  to 
depend  upon  a  man's  willingness  to  keep  them,  in 
order  to  realise  the  organic  purpose  of  their  being. 
Whether  conventionally  equal  or  not,  whether  voters 
or  not,  that  necessity  for  dependence  will  still  remain 
under  our  system  of  private  property  and  free  inde- 
pendent competition.  There  is  only  one  evident 
way  by  which  women  as  a  class  can  escape  from  that 
dependence  each  upon  an  individual  man  and  from 
all  the  practical  inferiority  this  dependence  entails, 
and  that  is  by  so  altering  their  status  as  to  make 
maternity  and  the  upbringing  of  children  a  charge 
not  upon  the  husband  or  the  mother  but  upon  the 
community.  The  public  Endowment  of  Maternity 
is  the  only  route  by  which  the  mass  of  women  can 
reach  that  personal  freedom  and  independent  citizen- 
ship so  many  of  them  desire. 

Now,  this  idea  of  the  Endowment  of  Maternity — 
or,  as  it  is  frequently  phrased,  the  Endowment  of  the 
Home — is  at  present  put  forward  by  the  modern 
Socialists  as  an  integral  part  of  their  proposals,  and 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  there  is  this  convergent 
possibility  which  may  bring  the  feminist  movement 
25  373 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

at  last  altogether  into  line  with  constructive  So- 
cialism. Obviously,  before  anything  in  the  direction 
of  family  endowment  becomes  practicable,  public 
bodies  and  the  State  organisation  will  need  to  display 
far  more  integrity  and  efficiency  than  they  do  in 
America  at  the  present  time.  Still,  that  is  the 
trend  of  things  in  all  contemporary  civilised  com- 
munities, and  it  is  a  trend  that  will  find  a  powerful 
reinforcement  in  men's  solicitudes  as  the  increasing 
failure  of  the  unsupported  private  family  to  produce 
offspring  adequate  to  the  needs  of  social  development 
becomes  more  and  more  conspicuous.  The  impas- 
sioned appeals  of  President  Roosevelt  have  already 
brought  home  the  race-suicide  of  the  native-born  to 
every  American  intelligence,  but  mere  rhetoric  will 
not  in  itself  suffice  to  make  people,  insecurely  em- 
ployed and  struggling  to  maintain  a  comfortable 
standard  of  life  against  great  economic  pressure, 
prolific.  Presented  as  a  call  to  a  particularly  onerous 
and  quite  unpaid  social  duty  the  appeal  for  unre- 
stricted parentage  fails.  Husband  and  wife  alike 
dread  an  excessive  burthen.  Travel,  leisure,  free- 
dom, comfort,  property  and  increased  ability  for 
business  competition  are  the  rewards  of  abstinence 
from  parentage,  and  even  the  disapproval  of  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  and  the  pride  of  offspring  are  in- 
sufficient counterweights  to  these  inducements. 
Large  families  disappear  from  the  States,  and  more 
and  more  and  more  couples  are  childless.  Those 
who  have  children  restrict  their  number  in  order  to 

374 


THE   AMERICAN    POPULATION 

afford  those  they  have  some  reasonable  advantage 
in  life.  This,  in  the  presence  of  the  necessary  knowl- 
edge, is  as  practically  inevitable  a  consequence  of  in- 
dividualist competition  and  the  old  American  tradition 
as  the  appearance  of  slums  and  a  class  of  millionaires. 

These  facts  go  to  the  very  root  of  the  American 
problem.  I  have  already  pointed  out  that,  in  spite 
of  a  colossal  immigration,  the  population  of  the 
United  States  was  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury over  twenty  millions  short  of  what  it  should 
have  been  through  its  own  native  increase  had  the 
birthrate  of  the  opening  of  the  century  been  main- 
tained. For  a  hundred  years  America  has  been 
"fed"  by  Europe.  That  feeding  process  will  not  go 
on  indefinitely.  The  immigration  came  in  waves  as 
if  reservoir  after  reservoir  was  tapped  and  exhausted. 
Nowadays  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  France  and 
Scandinavia  send  hardly  any  more;  they  have  no 
more  to  send.  Germany  and  Switzerland  send  only 
a  few.  The  South  European  and  Austrian  supply  is 
not  as  abundant  as  it  was.  There  may  come  a  time 
when  Europe  and  Western  Asia  will  have  no  more 
surplus  population  to  send,  when  even  Eastern  Asia 
will  have  passed  into  a  less  fecund  phase,  and  when 
America  will  have  to  look  to  its  own  natural  increase 
for  the  continued  development  of  its  resources. 

If  the  present  isolated  family  of  private  competi- 
tion is  still  the  social  unit,  it  seems  improbable  that 
there  will  be  any  greater  natural  increase  than  there 
is  in  France. 

375 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Will  the  growing  idea  of  a  closer  social  organisa- 
tion have  developed  by  that  time  to  the  possibility 
of  some  collective  effort  in  this  matter?  Or  will  that 
only  come  about  after  the  population  of  the  world 
has  passed  through  a  phase  of  absolute  recession? 
The  peculiar  constitution  of  the  United  States  gives 
a  remarkable  freedom  of  experiment  in  these  matters 
to  each  individual  state,  and  local  developments  do 
not  need  to  wait  upon  a  national  change  of  opinion; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  superficial  impression  of 
an  English  visitor  is  that  any  such  profound  inter- 
ference with  domestic  autonomy  runs  counter  to  all 
that  Americans  seem  to  hold  dear  at  the  present 
time.  These  are,  however,  new  ideas  and  new  con- 
siderations that  have  still  to  be  brought  adequately 
before  the  national  consciousness,  and  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  calculate  how  a  population  living  under 
changing  conditions  and  with  a  rising  standard  of 
education  and  a  developing  feminine  consciousness 
may  not  think  and  feel  and  behave  in  a  generation's 
time.  At  present  for  all  political  and  collective 
action  America  is  a  democracy  of  untutored  indi- 
vidualist men  who  will  neither  tolerate  such  inter- 
ference between  themselves  and  the  women  they 
choose  to  marry  as  the  Endowment  of  Motherhood 
implies,  nor  view  the  "kids"  who  will  at  times 
occur  even  in  the  best-regulated  families  as  anything 
but  rather  embarrassing,  rather  amusing  by-products 
of  the  individual  affections. 

I  find  in  the  London  New  Age  for  August  i5th, 
376 


THE   AMERICAN    POPULATION 

1908,  a  description  by  Mr.  Jerome  K.  Jerome  of 
"John  Smith,"  the  average  British  voter.  John 
Smith  might  serve  in  some  respects  for  the  common 
man  of  all  the  modern  civilisations.  Among  other 
things  that  John  Smith  thinks  and  wants,  he  wants : 

"a  little  house  and  garden  in  the  country  all  to  himself.  His 
idea  is  somewhere  near  half  an  acre  of  ground.  He  would  like 
a  piano  in  the  best  room;  it  has  always  been  his  dream  to  have 
a  piano.  The  youngest  girl,  he  is  convinced,  is  musical.  As  a 
man  who  has  knocked  about  the  world  and  has  thought,  he  quite 
appreciates  the  argument  that  by  co-operation  the  material  side 
of  life  can  be  greatly  improved.  He  quite  sees  that  by  com- 
bining a  dozen  families  together  in  one  large  house  better  prac- 
tical results  can  be  obtained.  It  is  as  easy  to  direct  the  cooking 
for  a  hundred  as  for  half  a  dozen.  There  would  be  less  waste 
of  food,  of  coals,  of  lighting.  To  put  aside  one  piano  for  one 
girl  is  absurd.  He  sees  all  this,  but  it  does  not  alter  one  little 
bit  his  passionate  craving  for  that  small  house  and  garden  all 
to  himself.  He  is  built  that  way.  He  is  typical  of  a  good  many 
other  men  and  women  built  on  the  same  pattern.  What  are  you 
going  to  do  with  them?  Change  them — their  instincts,  their 
very  nature,  rooted  in  the  centuries?  Or,  as  an  alternative,  vary 
Socialism  to  fit  John  Smith?  Which  is  likely  to  prove  the 
shorter  operation?" 

That,  however,  is  by  the  way.  Here  is  the  point 
at  issue: 

"He  has  heard  that  Socialism  proposes  to  acknowledge 
woman's  service  to  the  State  by  paying  her  a  weekly  wage  accord- 
ing to  the  number  of  children  that  she  bears  and  rears.  I  don't 
propose  to  repeat  his  objections  to  the  idea;  they  could  hardly 
be  called  objections.  There  is  an  ugly  look  comes  into  his  eyes ; 
something  quite  undefinable,  prehistoric,  almost  dangerous, 
looks  out  of  them.  ...  In  talking  to  him  on  this  subject  you 
do  not  seem  to  be  talking  to  a  man.  It  is  as  if  you  had  come 

377 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

face  to  face  with  something  behind  civilisation,  behind  humanity, 
something  deeper  down  still  among  the  dim  beginnings  of 
creation.  ..." 

Now,  no  doubt  Mr.  Jerome  is  writing  with  em- 
phasis here.  But  there  is  sufficient  truth  in  the 
passage  for  it  to  stand  here  as  a  rough  symbol  of 
another  factor  in  this  question.  John  Smithism, 
that  manly  and  individualist  element  in  the  citizen, 
stands  over  against  and  resists  all  the  forces  of 
organisation  that  would  subjugate  it  to  a  collective 
purpose.  It  is  careless  of  coming  national  cessation 
and  depopulation,  careless  of  the  insurgent  spirit 
beneath  the  acquiescences  of  Mrs.  Smith,  careless  of 
its  own  inevitable  defeat  in  the  economic  struggle, 
careless  because  it  can  understand  none  of  these 
things;  it  is  obstinately  muddle-headed,  asserting 
what  it  conceives  to  be  itself  against  the  universe  and 
all  other  John  Smiths  whatsoever.  It  is  a  factor  with 
all  other  factors.  The  creative,  acquisitive,  aggres- 
sive spirit  of  those  bigger  John  Smiths  who  succeed 
as  against  the  myriads  of  John  Smiths  who  fail,  the 
wider  horizons  and  more  efficient  methods  of  the 
educated  man,  the  awakening  class-consciousness  of 
women,  the  inevitable  futility  of  John  Smithism,  the 
sturdy  independence  that  makes  John  Smith  resent 
even  disciplined  co-operation  with  Tom  Brown  to 
achieve  a  common  end,  his  essential  incapacity, 
indeed,  for  collective  action;  all  these  things  are 
against  the  ultimate  triumph,  and  make  for  the 
ultimate  civilisation  even  of  John  Smith. 

378 


THE   AMERICAN   POPULATION 


It  may  be  doubted  if  the  increasing  collective  or- 
ganisation of  society  to  which  the  United  States  of 
America,  in  common  with  all  the  rest  of  the  world, 
seem  to  be  tending  will  be  to  any  very  large  extent 
a  national  organisation.  The  constitution  is  an 
immense  and  complicated  barrier  to  effectual  cen- 
tralisation. There  are  many  reasons  for  supposing 
the  national  government  will  always  remain  a  little 
ineffectual  and  detached  from  the  full  flow  of  Amer- 
ican life,  and  this  notwithstanding  the  very  great 
powers  with  which  the  President  is  endowed. 

One  of  these  reasons  is  certainly  the  peculiar  acci- 
dent that  has  placed  the  seat  of  government  upon 
the  Potomac.  To  the  thoughtful  visitor  to  the 
United  States  this  hiding  away  of  the  central  govern- 
ment in  a  minute  district  remote  from  all  the  great 
centres  of  thought,  population  and  business  activity 
becomes  more  remarkable,  more  perplexing,  more 
suggestive  of  an  incurable  weakness  in  the  national 
government  as  he  grasps  more  firmly  the  peculiarities 
of  the  American  situation. 

I  do  not  see  how  the  central  government  of  that 
great  American  nation  of  which  I  dream  can  possibly 
be  at  Washington,  and  I  do  not  see  how  the  present 
central  government  can  possibly  be  transferred  to 
any  other  centre.  But  to  go  to  Washington,  to  see 
and  talk  to  Washington,  is  to  receive  an  extraordi- 
nary impression  of  the  utter  isolation  and  hopeless- 

379 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ness  of  Washington.  The  National  Government  has 
an  air  of  being  marooned  there  or  as  though  it  had 
crept  into  a  corner,  to  do  something  in  the  dark. 
One  goes  from  the  abounding  movement  and  vitality 
of  the  Northern  cities  to  this  sunny  and  enervating 
place  through  the  negligently  cultivated  country  of 
Virginia,  and  one  discovers  the  slovenly,  unfinished 
promise  of  a  city,  broad  avenues  lined  by  negro 
shanties  and  patches  of  cultivation,  great  public 
buildings  and  an  immense  post  office,  a  lifeless 
museum,  an  inert  university,  a  splendid  desert  li- 
brary, a  street  of  souvenir  shops,  a  certain  industry 
of  "seeing  Washington,"  an  idiotic  colossal  obelisk. 
It  seems  an  ideal  nest  for  the  tariff  manipulator,  a 
festering  corner  of  delegates  and  agents  and  second- 
ary people.  In  the  White  House,  in  the  time  of 
President  Roosevelt,  the  present  writer  found  a 
transitory  glow  of  intellectual  activity,  the  spittoons 
and  glass  screens  that  once  made  it  like  a  London 
gin  palace  had  been  removed,  and  the  former  orgies 
of  handshaking  reduced  to  a  minimum.  It  was,  one 
felt,  an  accidental  phase.  The  assassination  of 
McKinley  was  an  interruption  of  the  normal  Wash- 
ington process.  To  this  place,  out  of  the  way  of 
everywhere,  come  the  senators  and  congressmen, 
mostly  leaving  their  families  behind  them  in  their 
states  of  origin,  and  hither,  too,  are  drawn  a  multi- 
tude of  journalists  and  political  agents  and  clerks,  a 
crowd  of  underbred,  mediocre  men.  For  most  of 
them  there  is  neither  social  nor  intellectual  life.  The 

380 


THE  AMERICAN    POPULATION 

thought  of  America  is  far  away,  centred  now  in  New 
York;  the  business  and  economic  development  cen- 
tres upon  New  York;  apart  from  the  President,  it 
is  in  New  York  that  one  meets  the  people  who 
matter,  and  the  New  York  atmosphere  that  grows 
and  develops  ideas  and  purposes.  New  York  is  the 
natural  capital  of  the  United  States,  and  would  need 
to  be  the  capital  of  any  highly  organised  national 
system.  Government  from  the  district  of  Columbia 
is  in  itself  the  repudiation  of  any  highly  organised 
national  system. 

But  government  from  this  ineffectual,  inert  place 
is  only  the  most  striking  outcome  of  that  inflexible 
constitution  the  wrangling  delegates  of  1787-8  did 
at  last  produce  out  of  a  conflict  of  State  jealousies. 
They  did  their  best  to  render  centralisation  or  any 
coalescence  of  States  impossible  and  private  property 
impregnable,  and  so  far  their  work  has  proved  extra- 
ordinarily effective.  Only  a  great  access  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  vigour  in  the  nation  can  ever  set  it 
aside.  And  while  the  more  and  more  sterile  millions 
of  the  United  States  grapple  with  the  legal  and 
traditional  difficulties  that  promise  at  last  to  arrest 
their  development  altogether,  the  rest  of  the  world 
will  be  moving  on  to  new  phases.  An  awakened 
Asia  will  be  reorganising  its  social  and  political  con- 
ceptions in  the  light  of  modern  knowledge  and 
modern  ideas,  and  South  America  will  be  working 
out  its  destinies,  perhaps  in  the  form  of  a  powerful 
confederation  of  states.  All  Europe  will  be  schooling 

381 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

its  John  Smiths  to  finer  discipline  and  broader  ideas. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  the  American  John  Smith 
may  have  little  to  brag  about  in  the  way  of  national 
predominance,  by  A.D.  2000.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  the  United  States  may  be  sitting  meekly  at  the 
feet  of  at  present  unanticipated  teachers. 


(New  Year,  ipog) 

THE  Editor  of  the  New  York  World  has  asked  me 
to  guess  the  general  trend  of  events  in  the  next  thirty 
years  or  so  with  especial  reference  to  the  outlook 
for  the  State  and  City  of  New  York.  I  like  and 
rarely  refuse  such  cheerful  invitations  to  prophesy. 
I  have  already  made  a  sort  of  forecast  (in  my  An- 
ticipations) of  what  may  happen  if  the  social  and 
economic  process  goes  on  fairly  smoothly  for  all  that 
time,  and  shown  a  New  York  relieved  from  its  present 
congestion  by  the  development  of  the  means  of 
communication,  and  growing  and  spreading  in  wide 
and  splendid  suburbs  towards  Boston  and  Phila- 
delphia. I  made  that  forecast  before  ever  I  passed 
Sandy  Hook,  but  my  recent  visit  only  enhanced  my 
sense  of  growth  and  "go"  in  things  American. 
Still,  we  are  nowadays  all  too  apt  to  think  that 
growth  is  inevitable  and  progress  in  the  nature  of 
things ;  the  Wonderful  Century,  as  Dr.  Alfred  Russel 
Wallace  has  called  it,  has  made  us  perhaps  over- 
confident and  forgetful  of  the  ruins  of  great  cities 
and  confident  prides  of  the  past  that  litter  the  world, 
and  here  I  will  write  about  the  other  alternative, 

383 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

of  the  progressive  process  "hitting  something,"  and 
smashing. 

There  are  two  chief  things  in  modern  life  that 
impress  me  as  dangerous  and  incalculable.  The  first 
of  these  is  the  modern  currency  and  financial  system, 
and  the  second  is  the  chance  we  take  of  destructive 
war.  Let  me  dwell  first  of  all  on  the  mysterious 
possibilities  of  the  former,  and  then  point  out  one 
or  two  uneasy  developments  of  the  latter. 

Now,  there  is  nothing  scientific  about  our  currency 
and  finance  at  all.  It  is  a  thing  that  has  grown  up 
and  elaborated  itself  out  of  very  simple  beginnings 
in  the  course  of  a  century  or  so.  Three  hundred 
years  ago  the  edifice  had  hardly  begun  to  rise  from 
the  ground,  most  property  was  real,  most  people 
lived  directly  on  the  land,  most  business  was  on  a 
cash  basis,  oversea  trade  was  a  proportionately 
small  affair,  labour  was  locally  fixed.  Most  of  the 
world  was  at  the  level  at  which  much  of  China 
remains  to-day — able  to  get  along  without  even 
coinage.  It  was  a  rudimentary  world  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  modern  financier  and  industrial 
organiser.  Well,  on  that  rude,  secure  basis  there 
has  now  been  piled  the  most  chancy  and  insecurely 
experimental  system  of  conventions  and  assumptions 
about  money  and  credit  it  is  possible  to  imagine. 
There  has  grown  up  a  vast  system  of  lending  and 
borrowing,  a  worldwide  extension  of  joint -stock 
enterprises  that  involve  at  last  the  most  fantastic 
relationships.  I  find  myself,  for  example,  owning 

384 


THE    POSSIBLE    COLLAPSE    OF    CIVILISATION 

(partially,  at  least)  a  bank  in  New  Zealand,  a  railway 
in  Cuba,  another  in  Canada,  several  in  Brazil,  an 
electric  power  plant  in  the  City  of  Westminster,  and 
so  on,  and  I  use  these  stocks  and  shares  as  a  sort  of 
interest-bearing  money.  If  I  want  money  to  spend, 
I  sell  a  railway  share  much  as  one  might  change  a 
hundred-pound  banknote;  if  I  have  more  cash  than 
I  need  immediately,  I  buy  a  few  shares.  I  perceive 
that  the  value  of  these  shares  oscillates,  sometimes 
rather  gravely,  and  that  the  value  of  the  alleged 
money  on  the  cheques  I  get  also  oscillates  as  com- 
pared with  the  things  I  want  to  buy;  that,  indeed, 
the  whole  system  (which  has  only  existed  for  a  couple 
of  centuries  or  so,  and  which  keeps  on  getting  higher 
and  giddier)  is  perpetually  swaying  and  quivering 
and  bending  and  sagging;  but  it  is  only  when  such 
a  great  crisis  occurs  as  that  of  1907  that  it  enters 
my  mind  that  possibly  there  is  no  limit  to  these 
oscillations,  that  possibly  the  whole  vast  accidental 
edifice  will  presently  come  smashing  down. 

Why  shouldn't  it? 

I  defy  any  economist  or  financial  expert  to  prove 
that  it  cannot.  That  it  hasn't  done  so  in  the  little 
time  for  which  it  has  existed  is  no  reply  at  all.  It  is 
like  arguing  that  a  man  cannot  die  because  he  has 
never  been  known  to  do  so.  Previous  men  have 
died,  previous  civilisations  have  collapsed,  if  not  of 
acute,  then  of  chronic  financial  disorders. 

The  experience  of  1907  indicated  very  clearly  how 
a  collapse  might  occur.  A  panic,  like  an  avalanche, 

385 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

is  a  thing  much  easier  to  start  than  stop.  Previous 
panics  have  been  arrested  by  good  luck;  this  last 
one  in  America,  for  example,  found  Europe  strong 
and  prosperous  and  helpful.  In  every  panic  period 
there  is  a  huge  dislocation  of  business  enterprises, 
vast  multitudes  of  men  are  thrown  out  of  employ- 
ment, there  is  grave  social  and  political  disorder; 
but  in  the  end,  so  far,  things  have  an  air  of  having 
recovered.  But  now,  suppose  the  panic  wave  a  little 
more  universal — and  panic  waves  tend  to  be  more 
extensive  than  they  used  to  be.  Suppose  that  when 
securities  fall  all  round,  and  gold  appreciates  in  New 
York,  and  frightened  people  begin  to  sell  investments 
and  hoard  gold,  the  same  thing  happens  in  other 
parts  of  the  world.  Increase  the  scale  of  the  trouble 
only  two  or  three  times,  and  would  our  system 
recover?  Imagine  great  masses  of  men  coming  out 
of  employment,  and  angry  and  savage,  in  all  our 
great  towns;  imagine  the  railways  working  with 
reduced  staffs  on  reduced  salaries  or  blocked  by 
strikers;  imagine  provision  dealers  stopping  consign- 
ments to  retailers,  and  retailers  hesitating  to  give 
credit.  A  phase  would  arrive  when  the  police  and 
militia  keeping  order  in  the  streets  would  find  them- 
selves on  short  rations  and  without  their  weekly  pay. 
What  we  moderns,  with  our  little  three  hundred 
years  or  so  of  security,  do  not  recognise  is  that 
things  that  go  up  and  down  may,  given  a  certain 
combination  of  chances,  go  down  steadily,  down  and 
down. 

386 


THE    POSSIBLE    COLLAPSE    OF    CIVILISATION 

What  would  you  do,  dear  reader — what  should  I 
do — if  a  slump  went  on  continually? 

And  that  brings  me  to  the  second  great  danger  to 
our  modern  civilisation,  and  that  is  War.  We  have 
over-developed  war.  While  we  have  left  our  peace 
organisation  to  the  niggling,  slow,  self-seeking  meth- 
ods of  private  enterprise,  while  we  have  left  the 
breeding  of  our  peoples  to  chance,  their  minds  to 
the  halfpenny  press  and  their  health  to  the  drug 
manufacturer,  we  have  pushed  forward  the  art  of 
war  on  severely  scientific  and  Socialist  lines ;  we  have 
put  all  the  collective  resources  of  the  community  and 
an  enormous  proportion  of  its  intelligence  and  in- 
vention ungrudgingly  into  the  improvement  and 
manufacture  of  the  apparatus  of  destruction.  Great 
Britain,  for  example,  is  content  with  the  railways  and 
fireplaces  and  types  of  housing  she  had  fifty  years 
ago;  she  still  uses  telephones  and  the  electric  light 
in  the  most  tentative  spirit;  but  every  ironclad  she 
had  five-and-twenty  years  ago  is  old  iron  now  and 
abandoned.  Everything  crawls  forward  but  the 
science  of  war;  that  rushes  on.  Of  what  will  happen 
if  presently  the  guns  begin  to  go  off  I  have  no  shadow 
of  doubt.  Every  year  has  seen  the  disproportionate 
increase  until  now.  Every  modern  European  state 
is  more  or  less  like  a  cranky,  ill-built  steamboat  in 
which  some  idiot  has  mounted  and  loaded  a  mon- 
strous gun  with  no  apparatus  to  damp  its  recoil. 
Whether  that  gun  hits  or  misses  when  it  is  fired, 
of  one  thing  we  may  be  absolutely  certain  —  it 

387 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

will  send  the  steamboat  to  the  bottom  of  the 
sea. 

Modern  warfare  is  an  insanity,  not  a  sane  business 
proposition.  Its  preparation  eats  more  and  more 
into  the  resources  which  should  be  furnishing  a 
developing  civilisation ;  its  possibilities  of  destruction 
are  incalculable.  A  new  epoch  has  opened  with  the 
coming  of  the  navigable  balloon  and  the  flying 
machine.  To  begin  with,  these  things  open  new 
gulfs  for  expenditure;  in  the  end  they  mean  possi- 
bilities of  destruction  beyond  all  precedent.  Such 
things  as  the  Zeppelin  and  the  Ville  de  Paris  are  only 
the  first  pigmy  essays  of  the  aeronaut.  It  is  clear 
that  to  be  effective,  capable  of  carrying  guns  and 
comparatively  insensitive  to  perforation  by  shot  and 
shell,  these  things  will  have  to  be  very  much  larger 
and  as  costly,  perhaps,  as  a  first-class  cruiser. 
Imagine  such  monsters  in  the  air,  and  wild  financial 
panic  below ! 

Here,  then,  are  two  associated  possibilities  with 
which  to  modify  our  expectation  of  an  America 
advancing  steadily  on  the  road  to  an  organised  civil- 
isation, of  New  York  rebuilding  herself  in  marble, 
spreading  like  a  garden  city  over  New  Jersey  and 
Long  Island  and  New  York  State,  becoming  a  new 
and  greater  Venice,  queen  of  the  earth. 

Perhaps,  after  all,  the  twentieth  century  isn't  going 
to  be  so  prosperous  as  the  nineteenth.  Perhaps, 
instead  of  going  resistlessly  onward,  we  are  going  to 
have  a  set-back.  Perhaps  we  are  going  to  be  put 

388 


THE    POSSIBLE    COLLAPSE    OF    CIVILISATION 

back  to  learn  over  again  under  simpler  conditions 
some  of  those  necessary  fundamental  lessons  our  race 
has  learnt  as  yet  insufficiently  well — honesty  and 
brotherhood,  social  collectivism,  and  the  need  of 
some  common  peace-preserving  council  for  the  whole 
world. 

26 


THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN 

OUR  conceptions  of  what  a  good  citizen  should  be 
are  all  at  sixes  and  sevens.  No  two  people  will  be 
found  to  agree  in  every  particular  of  such  an  ideal, 
and  the  extreme  divergences  upon  what  is  necessary, 
what  is  permissible,  what  is  unforgivable  in  him,  will 
span  nearly  the  whole  range  of  human  possibility  and 
conduct.  As  a  consequence,  we  bring  up  our  chil- 
dren in  a  mist  of  vague  intimations,  in  a  confusion  of 
warring  voices,  perplexed  as  to  what  they  must  do, 
uncertain  as  to  what  they  may  do,  doomed  to  lives 
of  compromise  and  fluctuating  and  inoperative 
opinion.  Ideals  and  suggestions  come  and  go  before 
their  eyes  like  figures  in  a  fog.  The  commonest 
pattern,  perhaps — the  commonest  pattern  certainly 
in  Sunday  schools  and  edifying  books,  and  on  all 
those  places  and  occasions  when  morality  is  sought  as 
an  end — is  a  clean  and  able-bodied  person,  truthful 
to  the  extent  that  he  does  not  tell  lies,  temperate 
so  far  as  abstinence  is  concerned,  honest  without 
pedantry,  and  active  in  his  own  affairs,  steadfastly 
law-abiding  and  respectful  to  custom  and  usage, 
though  aloof  from  the  tumult  of  politics,  brave  but 
not  adventurous,  punctual  in  some  form  of  religious 
exercise,  devoted  to  his  wife  and  children,  and  kind 

390 


THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN 

without  extravagance  to  all  men.  Everyone  feels 
that  this  is  not  enough,  everyone  feels  that  something 
more  is  wanted  and  something  different;  most  people 
are  a  little  interested  in  what  that  difference  can  be, 
and  it  is  a  business  that  much  of  what  is  more  than 
trivial  in  our  art,  our  literature  and  our  drama  must 
do  to  fill  in  bit  by  bit  and  shade  by  shade  the  subtle, 
the  permanent  detail  of  the  answer. 

It  does  very  greatly  help  in  this  question  to  bear 
in  mind  the  conflict  of  our  origins.  Every  age  is  an 
age  of  transition,  of  minglings,  of  the  breaking  up 
of  old,  narrow  cultures,  and  the  breaking  down  of 
barriers,  of  spiritual  and  often  of  actual  interbreeding. 
Not  only  is  the  physical  but  the  moral  and  intellec- 
tual ancestry  of  everyone  more  mixed  than  ever  it 
was  before.  We  blend  in  our  blood,  every  one  of  us, 
and  we  blend  in  our  ideas  and  purposes,  craftsmen, 
warriors,  savages,  peasants,  and  a  score  of  races,  and 
an  endless  multitude  of  social  expedients  and  rules. 
Go  back  but  a  hundred  generations  in  the  lineage  of 
the  most  delicate  girl  you  know,  and  you  will  find 
a  dozen  murderers.  You  will  find  liars  and  cheats, 
lascivious  sinners,  women  who  have  sold  themselves, 
slaves,  imbeciles,  devotees,  saints,  men  of  fantastic 
courage,  discreet  and  watchful  persons,  usurers, 
savages,  criminals  and  kings,  and  every  one  of  this 
miscellany,  not  simply  fathering  or  mothering  on  the 
way  to  her,  but  teaching  urgently  and  with  every 
grade  of  intensity,  views  and  habits  for  which  they 
stand.  Something  of  it  all  has  come  to  her,  albeit 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

much  may  seem  forgotten.  In  every  human  birth, 
with  a  new  little  variation,  a  fresh  slight  novelty  of  ar- 
rangement, the  old  issues  rise  again.  Our  ideas,  even 
more  than  our  blood,  flow  from  multitudinous  sources. 
Certain  groups  of  ideas  come  to  us  distinctively 
associated  with  certain  marked  ways  of  life.  Many, 
and  for  a  majority  of  us,  it  may  be,  most  of  our 
ancestors  were  serfs  or  slaves.  And  men  and  women 
who  have  had,  generation  after  generation,  to  adapt 
themselves  to  slavery  and  the  rule  of  a  master, 
develop  an  idea  of  goodness  very  different  from  that 
of  princes.  From  our  slave  ancestry,  says  Lester 
Ward,  we  learnt  to  work,  and  certainly  it  is  from 
slavery  we  derive  the  conception  that  industry,  even 
though  it  be  purposeless  industry,  is  a  virtue  in  itself. 
The  good  slave,  too,  has  a  morality  of  restraints;  he 
abstains  from  the  food  he  handles  and  hungers  for, 
and  he  denies  himself  pride  and  initiative  of  every 
sort.  He  is  honest  in  not  taking,  but  he  is  unscru- 
pulous about  adequate  service.  He  makes  no  virtue 
of  frankness,  but  much  of  kindly  helpfulness  and 
charity  to  the  weak.  He  has  no  sense  of  duty  in 
planning  or  economising.  He  is  polite  and  soft- 
spoken,  and  disposed  to  irony  rather  than  denuncia- 
tion, ready  to  admire  cuteness  and  condone  decep- 
tion. Not  so  the  rebel.  That  tradition  is  working 
in  us  also.  It  has  been  the  lot  of  vast  masses  of 
population  in  every  age  to  be  living  in  successful  or 
unsuccessful  resistance  to  mastery,  to  be  dreading 
oppression  or  to  be  just  escaped  from  it.  Resent- 

392 


THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN 

ment  becomes  a  virtue  then,  and  any  peace  with  the 
oppressor  a  crime.  It  is  from  rebel  origins  so  many 
of  us  get  the  idea  that  disrespectfulness  is  something 
of  a  duty  and  obstinacy  a  fine  thing.  And  under  the 
force  of  this  tradition  we  idealise  the  rugged  and 
unmanageable,  we  find  something  heroic  in  rough 
clothes  and  hands,  in  bad  manners,  insensitive  be- 
haviour, and  unsociableness.  And  a  community  of 
settlers,  again,  in  a  rough  country,  fighting  for  a  bare 
existence,  makes  a  virtue  of  vehemence,  of  a  hasty 
rapidity  of  execution.  Hurried  and  driven  men 
glorify  "push"  and  impatience,  and  despise  finish 
and  fine  discrimination  as  weak  and  demoralising 
things.  These  three,  the  Serf,  the  Rebel,  and  the 
Squatter,  are  three  out  of  a  thousand  types  and 
aspects  that  have  gone  to  our  making.  In  the 
American  composition  they  are  dominant.  But  all 
those  thousand  different  standards  and  traditions  are 
our  material,  each  with  something  fine,  and  each  with 
something  evil.  They  have  all  provided  the  atmos- 
phere of  upbringing  for  men  in  the  past.  Out  of 
them  and  out  of  unprecedented  occasions,  we  in  this 
newer  age,  in  which  there  are  no  slaves,  in  which 
every  man  is  a  citizen,  in  which  the  conveniences  of 
a  great  and  growing  civilisation  make  the  frantic 
avidity  of  the  squatter  a  nuisance,  have  to  set  our- 
selves to  frame  the  standard  of  our  children's  chil- 
dren, to  abandon  what  the  slave  or  the  squatter  or 
the  rebel  found  necessary  and  that  we  find  unneces- 
sary, to  fit  fresh  requirements  to  our  new  needs.  So 

393 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

we  have  to  develop  our  figure  of  the  fine  man,  our 
desirable  citizen  in  that  great  and  noble  civilised 
state  we  who  have  a  "sense  of  the  state"  would 
build  out  of  the  confusions  of  our  world. 

To  describe  that  ideal  modern  citizen  now  is  at 
best  to  make  a  guess  and  a  suggestion  of  what  must 
be  built  in  reality  by  the  efforts  of  a  thousand  minds. 
But  he  will  be  a  very  different  creature  from  that 
indifferent,  well-behaved  business  man  who  passes 
for  a  good  citizen  to-day.  He  will  be  neither  under 
the  slave  tradition  nor  a  rebel  nor  a  vehement 
elemental  man.  Essentially  he  will  be  aristocratic, 
aristocratic  not  in  the  sense  that  he  has  slaves  or 
class  inferiors,  because  probably  he  will  have  nothing 
of  the  sort,  but  aristocratic  in  the  sense  that  he  will 
feel  the  State  belongs  to  him  and  he  to  the  State. 
He  will  probably  be  a  public  servant;  at  any  rate, 
he  will  be  a  man  doing  some  work  in  the  complicated 
machinery  of  the  modern  community  for  a  salary  and 
not  for  speculative  gain.  Typically,  he  will  be  a 
professional  man.  I  do  not  think  the  ideal  modern 
citizen  can  be  a  person  living  chiefly  by  buying  for 
as  little  as  he  can  give  and  selling  for  as  much  as  he 
can  get;  indeed,  most  of  what  we  idolise  to-day  as 
business  enterprise  I  think  he  will  regard  with  con- 
siderable contempt.  But,  then,  I  am  a  Socialist, 
and  look  forward  to  the  time  when  the  economic 
machinery  of  the  community  will  be  a  field  not  for 
private  enrichment  but  for  public  service. 

He  will  be  good  to  his  wife  and  children  as  he  will 
394 


THE  IDEAL  CITIZEN 

be  good  to  his  friend,  but  he  will  be  no  partisan  for 
wife  and  family  against  the  common  welfare.  His 
solicitude  will  be  for  the  welfare  of  all  the  children 
of  the  community;  he  will  have  got  beyond  blind 
instinct;  he  will  have  the  intelligence  to  understand 
that  almost  any  child  in  the  world  may  have  as  large 
a  share  as  his  own  offspring  in  the  parentage  of  his 
great-great-grandchildren.  His  wife  he  will  treat  as 
his  equal;  he  will  not  be  "kind"  to  her,  but  fair 
and  frank  and  loving,  as  one  equal  should  be  with 
another;  he  will  no  more  have  the  impertinence  to 
pet  and  pamper  her,  to  keep  painful  and  laborious 
things  out  of  her  knowledge,  to  "shield"  her  from 
the  responsibility  of  political  and  social  work,  than 
he  will  to  make  a  Chinese  toy  of  her  and  bind  her 
feet.  He  and  she  will  love  that  they  may  enlarge 
and  not  limit  one  another. 

Consciously  and  deliberately  the  ideal  citizen  will 
seek  beauty  in  himself  and  in  his  way  of  living.  He 
will  be  temperate  rather  than  harshly  abstinent,  and 
he  will  keep  himself  fit  and  in  training  as  an  ele- 
mentary duty.  He  will  not  be  a  fat  or  emaciated 
person.  Fat,  panting  men,  and  thin,  enfeebled  ones 
cannot  possibly  be  considered  good  citizens  any  more 
than  dirty  or  verminous  people.  He  will  be  just  as 
fine  and  seemly  in  his  person  as  he  can  be,  not  from 
vanity  and  self-assertion,  but  to  be  pleasing  and 
agreeable  to  his  fellows.  The  ugly  dress  and  ugly 
bearing  of  the  "good  man"  of  to-day  will  be  as  in- 
comprehensible to  him  as  the  filth  of  a  palaeolithic 

395 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

savage  is  to  us.  He  will  not  speak  of  his  "frame," 
and  hang  clothes  like  sacks  over  it;  he  will  know  and 
feel  that  he  and  the  people  about  him  have  wonderful, 
delightful  and  beautiful  bodies. 

And — I  speak  of  the  ideal  common  citizen — he  will 
be  a  student  and  a  philosopher.  To  understand  will 
be  one  of  his  necessary  duties.  His  mind,  like  his 
body,  will  be  fit  and  well  clothed.  He  will  not  be 
too  busy  to  read  and  think,  though  he  may  be  too 
busy  to  rush  about  to  get  ignorantly  and  blatantly 
rich.  It  follows  that,  since  he  will  have  a  mind 
exercised  finely  and  flexible  and  alert,  he  will  not  be 
a  secretive  man.  Secretiveness  and  secret  planning 
are  vulgarity;  men  and  women  need  to  be  educated, 
and  he  will  be  educated  out  of  these  vices.  He  will 
be  intensely  truthful,  not  simply  in  the  vulgar  sense 
of  not  misstating  facts  when  pressed,  but  truthful  in 
the  manner  of  the  scientific  man  or  the  artist,  and 
as  scornful  of  concealment  as  they;  truthful,  that  is 
to  say,  as  the  expression  of  a  ruling  desire  to  have 
things  made  plain  and  clear,  because  that  so  they  are 
most  beautiful  and  life  is  at  its  finest.  .  .  . 

And  all  that  I  have  written  of  him  is  equally  true 
and  applies  word  for  word,  with  only  such  changes  of 
gender  as  are  needed,  to  the  woman  citizen  also. 


SOME  POSSIBLE  DISCOVERIES 

THE  present  time  is  harvest  home  for  the  prophets. 
The  happy  speculator  in  future  sits  on  the  piled-up 
wain,  singing  "I  told  you  so,"  with  the  submarine 
and  the  flying  machine  and  the  Marconigram  and 
the  North  Pole  successfully  achieved.  In  the  tumult 
of  realisations  it  perhaps  escapes  attention  that  the 
prophetic  output  of  new  hopes  is  by  no  means  keeping 
pace  with  the  crop  of  consummations.  The  present 
trend  of  scientific  development  is  not  nearly  so  obvi- 
ous as  it  was  a  score  of  years  ago;  its  promises  lack 
the  elementary  breadth  of  that  simpler  time.  Once 
you  have  flown,  you  have  flown.  Once  you  have 
steamed  about  under  water,  you  have  steamed  about 
under  water.  There  seem  no  more  big  things  of  that 
kind  available — so  that  I  almost  regret  the  precipi- 
tance of  Commander  Peary  and  Captain  Amundsen. 
No  one  expects  to  go  beyond  that  atmosphere  for 
some  centuries  at  least;  all  the  elements  are  now 
invaded.  Conceivably  man  may  presently  contrive 
some  sort  of  earthworm  apparatus,  so  that  he  could 
go  through  the  rocks  prospecting  very  much  as  an 
earthworm  goes  through  the  soil,  excavating  in 
front  and  dumping  behind,  but,  to  put  it  moder- 
ately, there  are  considerable  difficulties.  And  I 

397 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

doubt  the  imaginative  effect.  On  the  whole,  I  think 
material  science  has  got  samples  now  of  all  its  crops 
at  this  level,  and  that  what  lies  before  it  in  the 
coming  years  is  chiefly  to  work  them  out  in  detail 
and  realise  them  on  the  larger  scale.  No  doubt 
science  will  still  yield  all  sorts  of  big  surprising 
effects,  but  nothing,  I  think,  to  equal  the  dramatic 
novelty,  the  demonstration  of  man  having  got  to 
something  altogether  new  and  strange,  of  Mont- 
golfier,  or  the  Wright  Brothers,  or  Columbus,  or  the 
Polar  conquest.  There  remains,  of  course,  the  tap- 
ping of  atomic  energy,  but  I  give  two  hundred  years 

yet  before  that 

So  far,  then,  as  mechanical  science  goes  I  am 
inclined  to  think  the  coming  period  will  be,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  common  man,  almost  without 
sensational  interest.  There  will  be  an  immense 
amount  of  enrichment  and  filling-in,  but  of  the  sort 
that  does  not  get  prominently  into  the  daily  papers. 
At  every  point  there  will  be  economies  and  simplifica- 
tions of  method,  discoveries  of  new  artificial  sub- 
stances with  new  capabilities,  and  of  new  methods  of 
utilising  power.  There  will  be  a  progressive  change 
in  the  apparatus  and  quality  of  human  life — the  sort 
of  alteration  of  the  percentages  that  causes  no  intel- 
lectual shock.  Electric  heating,  for  example,  will 
become  practicable  in  our  houses,  and  then  cheaper, 
and  at  last  so  cheap  and  good  that  nobody  will  burn 
coal  any  more.  Little  electric  contrivances  will  dis- 
pense with  menial  service  in  more  and  more  direc- 

398 


SOME   POSSIBLE   DISCOVERIES 

tions.  The  builder  will  introduce  new,  more  con- 
venient, healthier  and  prettier  substances,  and  the 
young  architect  will  become  increasingly  the  intelli- 
gent student  of  novelty.  The  steam  engine,  the  coal 
yard,  and  the  tall  chimney,  and  indeed  all  chimneys, 
will  vanish  quietly  from  our  urban  landscape.  The 
speeding  up  and  cheapening  of  travel,  and  the  in- 
crease in  its  swiftness  and  comfort,  will  go  on  steadily 
— widening  experience.  A  more  systematic  and 
understanding  social  science  will  be  estimating  the 
probable  growth  and  movement  of  population,  and 
planning  town  and  country  on  lines  that  would  seem 
to-day  almost  inconceivably  wise  and  generous.  All 
this  means  a  quiet  broadening  and  aeration  and 
beautifying  of  life.  Utopian  requirements,  so  far  as 
the  material  side  of  things  goes,  will  be  executed  and 
delivered  with  at  last  the  utmost  promptness.  .  .  . 
It  is  in  quite  other  directions  that  the  scientific 
achievements  to  astonish  our  children  will  probably 
be  achieved.  Progress  never  appears  to  be  uniform 
in  human  affairs.  There  are  intricate  correlations 
between  department  and  department.  One  field 
must  mark  time  until  another  can  come  up  to  it  with 
results  sufficiently  arranged  and  conclusions  suffi- 
ciently simplified  for  application.  Medicine  waits 
on  organic  chemistry,  geology  on  mineralogy,  and 
both  on  the  chemistry  of  high  pressures  and  tem- 
perature. And  subtle  variations  in  method  and  the 
prevailing  mental  temperament  of  the  type  of  writer 
engaged,  produce  remarkable  differences  in  the  qual- 

399 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ity  and  quantity  of  the  stated  result.  Moreover, 
there  are  in  the  history  of  every  scientific  province 
periods  of  seed-time,  when  there  is  great  activity 
without  immediate  apparent  fruition,  and  periods, 
as,  for  example,  the  last  two  decades  of  electrical 
application,  of  prolific  realisation.  It  is  highly  prob- 
able that  the  physiologist  and  the  organic  chemist 
are  working  towards  co-operations  that  may  make 
the  physician's  sphere  the  new  scientific  wonderland. 
At  present  dietary  and  regimen  are  the  happy 
hunting  ground  of  the  quack  and  that  sort  of  volun- 
teer specialist,  half -expert,  half-impostor,  who  flour- 
ishes in  the  absence  of  worked  out  and  definite  knowl- 
edge. The  general  mass  of  the  medical  profession, 
equipped  with  a  little  experience  and  a  muddled 
training,  and  preposterously  impeded  by  the  private 
adventure  conditions  under  which  it  lives,  goes  about 
pretending  to  the  possession  of  precise  knowledge 
which  simply  does  not  exist  in  the  world.  Medical 
research  is  under-endowed  and  stupidly  endowed,  not 
for  systematic  scientific  inquiry  so  much  as  for  the 
unscientific  seeking  of  remedies  for  specific  evils — for 
cancer,  consumption,  and  the  like.  Yet  masked, 
misrepresented,  limited  and  hampered,  the  work  of 
establishing  a  sound  science  of  vital  processes  in 
health  and  disease  is  probably  going  on  now,  similar 
to  the  clarification  of  physics  and  chemistry  that 
went  on  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
early  years  of  the  nineteenth  centuries.  It  is  not 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  medicine  may  presently 

400 


SOME   POSSIBLE   DISCOVERIES 

arrive  at  far-reaching  generalised  convictions,  and 
proceed  to  take  over  this  great  hinterland  of  human 
interests  which  legitimately  belongs  to  it. 

But  medicine  is  not  the  only  field  to  which  we  may 
reasonably  look  for  a  sudden  development  of  wonders. 
Compared  with  the  sciences  of  matter,  psychology 
and  social  science  have  as  yet  given  the  world 
remarkably  little  cause  for  amazement.  Not  only 
is  our  medicine  feeble  and  fragmentary,  but  our 
educational  science  is  the  poorest  miscellany  of 
aphorisms  and  dodges.  Indeed,  directly  one  goes 
beyond  the  range  of  measurement  and  weighing  and 
classification,  one  finds  a  sort  of  unprogressive  floun- 
dering going  on,  which  throws  the  strongest  doubts 
upon  the  practical  applicability  of  the  current  logical 
and  metaphysical  conceptions  in  those  fields.  We 
have  emerged  only  partially  from  the  age  of  the 
schoolmen.  In  these  directions  we  have  not  emerged 
at  all.  It  is  quite  possible  that  in  university  lecture 
rooms  and  forbidding  volumes  of  metaphysical  dis- 
cussion a  new  emancipation  of  the  human  intellect 
and  will  is  even  now  going  on.  Presently  men  may 
be  attacking  the  problems  of  the  self-control  of  hu- 
man life  and  of  human  destiny  in  new  phrases  and  an 
altogether  novel  spirit. 

•  Guesses  at  the  undiscovered  must  necessarily  be 
vague,  but  my  anticipations  fall  into  two  groups,  and 
first  I  am  disposed  to  expect  a  great  systematic  in- 
crement in  individual  human  power.  We  probably 
have  no  suspicion  as  yet  of  what  may  be  done  with 

401 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

the  human  body  and  mind  by  way  of  enhancing  its 
effectiveness.  I  remember  talking  to  the  late  Sir 
Michael  Foster  upon  the  possibilities  of  modern 
surgery,  and  how  he  confessed  that  he  did  not  dare 
for  his  reputation's  sake  tell  ordinary  people  the 
things  he  believed  would  some  day  become  matter- 
of-fact  operations.  In  that  respect  I  think  he  spoke 
for  very  many  of  his  colleagues.  It  is  already  possi- 
ble to  remove  almost  any  portion  of  the  human 
body,  including,  if  needful,  large  sections  of  the 
brain;  it  is  possible  to  graft  living  flesh  on  living 
flesh,  make  new  connections,  mould,  displace,  and 
rearrange.  It  is  also  not  impossible  to  provoke  local 
hypertrophy,  and  not  only  by  knife  and  physical 
treatment,  but  by  the  subtler  methods  of  hypnotism, 
profound  changes  can  be  wrought  in  the  essential 
structure  of  a  human  being.  If  only  our  knowledge 
of  function  and  value  was  at  all  adequate,  we  could 
correct  and  develop  ourselves  in  the  most  extraordi- 
nary way.  Our  knowledge  is  not  adequate,  but  it 
may  not  always  remain  inadequate. 

We  have  already  had  some  very  astonishing  sug- 
gestions in  this  direction  from  Doctor  Metchnikoff. 
He  regards  the  human  stomach  and  large  intestine 
as  not  only  vestigial  and  superfluous  in  the  human 
economy,  but  as  positively  dangerous  on  account  of 
the  harbour  they  afford  for  those  bacteria  that 
accelerate  the  decay  of  age.  He  proposes  that  these 
viscera  should  be  removed.  To  a  layman  like  myself 
this  is  an  altogether  astounding  and  horrifying  idea, 

402 


SOME   POSSIBLE   DISCOVERIES 

but  Doctor  Metchnikoff  is  a  man  of  the  very  greatest 
scientific  reputation,  and  it  does  not  give  him  any 
qualm  of  horror  or  absurdity  to  advance  it.  I  am 
quite  sure  that  if  a  gentleman  called  upon  me  "done 
up"  in  the  way  I  am  dimly  suggesting,  with  most  of 
the  contents  of  his  abdomen  excavated,  his  lungs  and 
heart  probably  enlarged  and  improved,  parts  of  his 
brain  removed  to  eliminate  harmful  tendencies  and 
make  room  for  the  expansion  of  the  remainder,  his 
mind  and  sensibilities  increased,  and  his  liability  to 
fatigue  and  the  need  of  sleep  abolished,  I  should  con- 
ceal with  the  utmost  difficulty  my  inexpressible  dis- 
gust and  terror.  But,  then,  if  M.  Bleriot,  with  his 
flying  machine,  ear-flaps  and  goggles,  had  soared 
down  in  the  year  54  B.C.,  let  us  say,  upon  my  woad- 
adorned  ancestors — every  family  man  in  Britain  was 
my  ancestor  in  those  days — at  Dover,  they  would 
have  had  entirely  similar  emotions.  And  at  present 
I  am  not  discussing  what  is  beautiful  in  humanity, 
but  what  is  possible — and  what,  being  possible,  is 
likely  to  be  attempted. 

It  does  not  follow  that  because  men  will  some  day 
have  this  enormous  power  over  themselves,  physi- 
cally and  mentally,  they  will  necessarily  make  them- 
selves horrible — even  by  our  present  standards  quite 
a  lot  of  us  would  be  all  the  slenderer  and  more 
active  and  graceful  for  "  Metchnikoffing  " — nor  does 
surgery  exhaust  the  available  methods.  We  are  still 
in  the  barbaric  age,  so  far  as  our  use  of  food  and  drugs 
is  concerned.  We  stuff  all  sorts  of  substances  into 

403 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

our  unfortunate  interiors  and  blunder  upon  the  most 
various  consequences.  Few  people  of  threescore  and 
ten  but  have  spent  in  the  aggregate  the  best  part 
of  a  year  in  a  state  of  indigestion,  stupid,  angry  or 
painful  indigestion  as  the  case  may  be.  No  one 
would  be  so  careless  and  ignorant  about  the  fuel  he 
burnt  in  his  motor-car  as  most  of  us  are  about  the 
fuel  we  burn  in  our  bodies.  And  there  are  all  sort 
of  stimulating  and  exhilarating  things,  digesting 
things,  fatigue  -  suppressing  things,  exercise  -  econo- 
mising things,  we  dare  not  use  because  we  are  afraid 
of  our  ignorance  of  their  precise  working.  There 
seems  no  reason  to  suppose  that  human  life,  properly 
understood  and  controlled,  could  not  be  a  constant 
succession  of  delightful  and  for  the  most  part  active 
bodily  and  mental  phases.  It  is  sheer  ignorance  and 
bad  management  that  keeps  the  majority  of  people 
in  that  disagreeable  system  of  states  which  we  indi- 
cate by  saying  we  are  "a  bit  off  colour"  or  a  little 
"out  of  training."  It  may  seem  madly  Utopian  now 
to  suggest  that  practically  everyone  in  the  com- 
munity might  be  clean,  beautiful,  incessantly  active, 
"fit,"  and  long-lived,  with  the  marks  of  all  the 
surgery  they  have  undergone  quite  healed  and 
hidden,  but  not  more  madly  Utopian  than  it  would 
have  seemed  to  King  Alfred  the  Great  if  one  had  said 
that  practically  everyone  in  this  country,  down  to 
the  very  swineherds,  should  be  able  to  read  and 
write. 

Metchnikoff  has  speculated  upon  the  possibility  of 
404 


SOME   POSSIBLE   DISCOVERIES 

delaying  old  age,  and  I  do  not  see  why  his  method 
should  not  be  applied  to  the  diurnal  need  of  sleep. 
No  vital  process  seems  to  be  absolutely  fated  in 
itself;  it  is  a  thing  conditioned  and  capable  of  modi- 
fication. If  Metchnikoff  is  right — and  to  a  certain 
extent  he  must  be  right — the  decay  of  age  is  due  to 
changing  organic  processes  that  may  be  checked  and 
delayed  and  modified  by  suitable  food  and  regimen. 
He  holds  out  hope  of  a  new  phase  in  the  human  cycle, 
after  the  phase  of  struggle  and  passion,  a  phase  of 
serene  intellectual  activity,  old  age  with  all  its  expe- 
rience and  none  of  its  infirmities.  Still  more  are 
fatigue  and  the  need  for  repose  dependent  upon 
chemical  changes  in  the  body.  It  would  seem  we 
are  unable  to  maintain  exertion,  partly  through  the 
exhaustion  of  our  tissues,  but  far  more  by  the 
loading  of  our  blood  with  fatigue  products — a  re- 
cuperative interlude  must  ensue.  But  there  is  no 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  usual  food  of  to-day  is 
the  most  rapidly  assimilable  nurture  possible,  that 
a  rapidly  digestible  or  injectable  substance  is  not 
conceivable  that  would  vastly  accelerate  repair,  nor 
that  the  elimination  and  neutralisation  of  fatigue 
products  might  not  also  be  enormously  hastened. 
There  is  no  inherent  impossibility  in  the  idea  not 
only  of  various  glands  being  induced  to  function  in 
a  modified  manner,  but  even  in  the  insertion  upon 
the  circulation  of  interceptors  and  artificial  glandular 
structures.  No  doubt  that  may  strike  even  an 
adventurous  surgeon  as  chimerical,  but  consider 
27  405 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

what  people,  even  authoritative  people,  were  saying 
of  flying  and  electric  traction  twenty  years  ago.  At 
present  a  man  probably  does  not  get  more  than  three 
or  four  hours  of  maximum  mental  and  physical 
efficiency  in  the  day.  Few  men  can  keep  at  their 
best  in  either  physical  or  intellectual  work  for  so 
long  as  that.  The  rest  of  the  time  goes  in  feeding, 
digesting,  sleeping,  sitting  about,  relaxation  of  various 
kinds.  It  is  quite  possible  that  science  may  set  itself 
presently  to  extend  systematically  that  proportion  of 
efficient  time.  The  area  of  maximum  efficiency  may 
invade  the  periods  now  demanded  by  digestion, 
sleep,  exercise,  so  that  at  last  nearly  the  whole  of  a 
man's  twenty-four  hours  will  be  concentrated  on  his 
primary  interests  instead  of  dispersed  among  these 
secondary  necessary  matters. 

Please  understand  I  do  not  consider  this  concen- 
tration of  activity  and  these  vast  "artificialisations" 
of  the  human  body  as  attractive  or  desirable  things. 
At  the  first  proposal  much  of  this  tampering  with  the 
natural  stuff  of  life  will  strike  anyone,  I  think,  as 
ugly  and  horrible,  just  as  seeing  a  little  child,  green- 
white  and  still  under  an  anaesthetic,  gripped  my  heart 
much  more  dreadfully  than  the  sight  of  the  same 
child  actively  bawling  with  pain.  But  the  business 
of  this  paper  is  to  discuss  things  that  may  happen, 
and  not  to  evolve  dreams  of  loveliness.  Perhaps 
things  of  this  kind  will  be  manageable  without  dread- 
fulness.  Perhaps  man  will  come  to  such  wisdom 
that  neither  the  knife  nor  the  drugs  nor  any  of  the 

406 


SOME   POSSIBLE   DISCOVERIES 

powers  which  science  thrusts  into  his  hand  will  slay 
the  beauty  of  life  for  him.  Suppose  we  assume  that 
he  is  not  such  a  fool  as  to  let  that  happen,  and  that 
ultimately  he  will  emerge  triumphant  with  all  these 
powers  utilised  and  controlled. 

It  is  not  only  that  an  amplifying  science  may  give 
mankind  happier  bodies  and  far  more  active  and 
eventful  lives,  but  that  psychology  and  educational 
and  social  science,  reinforcing  literature  and  working 
through  literature  and  art,  may  dare  to  establish 
serenities  in  his  soul.  For  surely  no  one  who  has 
lived,  no  one  who  has  watched  sin  and  crime  and 
punishment,  but  must  have  come  to  realise  the 
enormous  amount  of  misbehaviour  that  is  mere  igno- 
rance and  want  of  mental  scope.  For  my  own  part 
I  have  never  believed  in  the  devil.  And  it  may  be 
a  greater  undertaking  but  no  more  impossible  to 
make  ways  to  goodwill  and  a  good  heart  in  men  than 
it  is  to  tunnel  mountains  and  dyke  back  the  sea.  The 
way  that  led  from  the  darkness  of  the  cave  to  the 
electric  light  is  the  way  that  will  lead  to  light  in  the 
souls  of  men,  that  is  to  say  the  way  of  free  and 
fearless  thinking,  free  and  fearless  experiment,  or- 
ganised exchange  of  thoughts  and  results,  and  pa- 
tience and  persistence  and  a  sort  of  intellectual 
civility. 

And  with  the  development  of  philosophical  and 
scientific  method  that  will  go  on  with  this  great 
increase  in  man's  control  over  himself,  another  issue 
that  is  now  a  mere  pious  aspiration  above  abysses  of 

407 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

ignorance  and  difficulty,  will  come  to  be  a  manage- 
able matter.  It  has  been  the  perpetual  wonder  of 
philosophers  from  Plato  onward  that  men  have  bred 
their  dogs  and  horses  and  left  any  man  or  woman, 
however  vile,  free  to  bear  offspring  in  the  next 
generation  of  men.  Still  that  goes  on.  Beautiful 
and  wonderful  people  die  childless  and  bury  their 
treasure  in  the  grave,  and  we  rest  content  with  a 
system  of  matrimony  that  seems  designed  to  per- 
petuate mediocrity.  A  day  will  come  when  men  will 
be  in  possession  of  knowledge  and  opportunity  that 
will  enable  them  to  master  this  position,  and  then 
certainly  will  it  be  assured  that  every  generation 
shall  be  born  better  than  was  the  one  before  it.  And 
with  that  the  history  of  humanity  will  enter  upon  a 
new  phase,  a  phase  which  will  be  to  our  lives  as  day- 
light is  to  the  dreaming  of  a  child  as  yet  unborn. 


THE  HUMAN  ADVENTURE 

ALONE  among  all  the  living  things  this  globe  has 
borne,  man  reckons  with  destiny.  All  other  living 
things  obey  the  forces  that  created  them;  and  when 
the  mood  of  the  power  changes,  submit  themselves 
passively  to  extinction.  Man  only  looks  upon  those 
forces  in  the  face,  anticipates  the  exhaustion  of 
Nature's  kindliness,  seeks  weapons  to  defend  him- 
self. Last  of  the  children  of  Saturn,  he  escapes  their 
general  doom.  He  dispossesses  his  begetter  of  all 
possibility  of  replacement,  and  grasps  the  sceptre  of 
the  world.  Before  man  the  great  and  prevalent 
creatures  followed  one  another  processionally  to 
extinction;  the  early  monsters  of  the  ancient  seas, 
the  clumsy  amphibians  struggling  breathless  to  the 
land,  the  reptiles,  the  theriomorpha  and  the  dino- 
saurs, the  bat-winged  reptiles  of  the  Mesozoic  forests, 
the  colossal  grotesque  first  mammals,  the  giant  sloths, 
the  mastodons  and  mammoths;  it  is  as  if  some  idle 
dreamer  moulded  them  and  broke  them  and  cast  them 
aside,  until  at  last  comes  man  and  seizes  the  creative 
wrist  that  would  wipe  him  out  of  being  again. 

There  is  nothing  else  in  all  the  world  that  so  turns 
against  the  powers  that  have  made  it,  unless  it  be 
man's  follower  fire.  But  fire  is  witless;  a  little 

409 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

stream,  a  changing  breeze  can  stop  it.  Man  circum- 
vents. If  fire  were  human  it  would  build  boats 
across  the  rivers  and  outmanoeuvre  the  wind.  It 
would  lie  in  wait* in  sheltered  places,  smouldering, 
husbanding  its  fuel  until  the  grass  was  yellow  and 
the  forests  sere.  But  fire  is  a  mere  creature  of 
man's;  our  world  before  his  coming  knew  nothing  of 
it  in  any  of  its  habitable  places,  never  saw  it  except 
in  the  lightning  flash  or  remotely  on  some  volcanic 
coronet.  Man  brought  it  into  the  commerce  of  life, 
a  shining,  resentful  slave,  to  hound  off  the  startled 
beasts  from  his  sleeping-place  and  serve  him  like 
a  dog. 

Suppose  that  some  enduring  intelligence  watched 
through  the  ages  the  successions  of  life  upon  this 
planet,  marked  the  spreading  first  of  this  species  and 
then  that,  the  conflicts,  the  adaptations,  the  pre- 
dominances, the  dyings  away,  and  conceive  how  it 
would  have  witnessed  this  strange  dramatic  emer- 
gence of  a  rare  great  ape  to  manhood.  To  such  a 
mind  the  creature  would  have  seemed  at  first  no 
more  than  one  of  several  varieties  of  clambering 
frugivorous  mammals,  a  little  distinguished  by  a 
disposition  to  help  his  clumsy  walking  with  a  stake 
and  reinforce  his  fist  with  a  stone.  The  foreground 
of  the  picture  would  have  been  filled  by  the  rhinoceros 
and  mammoth,  the  great  herds  of  ruminants,  the 
sabre-toothed  lion  and  the  big  bears.  Then  pres- 
ently the  observer  would  have  noted  a  peculiar  in- 
creasing handiness  about  the  obscurer  type,  an 

410 


THE  HUMAN  ADVENTURE 

unwonted  intelligence  growing  behind  its  eyes.  He 
would  have  perceived  a  disposition  in  this  creature 
no  beast  had  shown  before,  a  disposition  to  make 
itself  independent  of  the  conditions  of  climate  and 
the  chances  of  the  seasons.  Did  shelter  fail  among 
the  trees  and  rocks,  this  curious  new  thing  began 
to  make  itself  harbours  of  its  own;  was  food  irregular, 
it  multiplied  food.  It  began  to  spread  out  from  its 
original  circumstances,  fitting  itself  to  novel  needs, 
leaving  the  forests,  invading  the  plains,  following  the 
watercourses  upward  and  downward,  presently  carry- 
ing the  smoke  of  its  fires  like  a  banner  of  conquest 
into  wintry  desolations  and  the  high  places  of  the 
earth. 

The  first  onset  of  man  must  have  been  compara- 
tively slow,  the  first  advances  needed  long  ages.  By 
small  degrees  it  gathered  pace.  The  stride  from  the 
scattered  savagery  of  the  earlier  stone  period  to  the 
first  cities,  historically  a  vast  interval,  would  have 
seemed  to  that  still  watcher,  measuring  by  the  stand- 
ards of  astronomy  and  the  rise  and  decline  of  races 
and  genera  and  orders,  a  step  almost  abrupt.  It 
took,  perhaps,  a  thousand  generations  or  so  to  make 
it.  In  that  interval  man  passed  from  an  animal- 
like  obedience  to  the  climate  and  the  weather  and  his 
own  instincts,  from  living  in  small  family  parties  of 
a  score  or  so  over  restricted  areas  of  indulgent 
country,  to  permanent  settlements,  to  the  life  of 
tribal  and  national  communities  and  the  beginnings 
of  cities.  He  had  spread  in  that  fragment  of  time 

411 


SOCIAL  FORCES  IN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

over  great  areas  of  the  earth's  surface,  and  now  he 
was  adapting  himself  to  the  Arctic  circle  on  the  one 
hand  and  to  the  life  of  the  tropics  on  the  other;  he 
had  invented  the  plough  and  the  ship,  and  subju- 
gated most  of  the  domestic  animals ;  he  was  beginning 
to  think  of  the  origin  of  the  world  and  the  mysteries 
of  being.  Writing  had  added  its  enduring  records 
to  oral  tradition,  and  he  was  already  making  roads. 
Another  five  or  six  hundred  generations  at  most 
bring  him  to  ourselves.  We  sweep  into  the  field  of 
that  looker-on,  the  momentary  incarnations  of  this 
sempiternal  being,  Man.  And  after  us  there  comes — 
i  A  curtain  falls. 

The  time  in  which  we,  whose  minds  meet  here  in 
this  writing,  were  born  and  live  and  die,  would  be 
to  that  imagined  observer  a  mere  instant's  phase  in 
the  swarming  liberation  of  our  kind  from  ancient 
imperatives.  It  would  seem  to  him  a  phase  of  un- 
precedented swift  change  and  expansion  and  achieve- 
ment. In  this  last  handful  of  years,  electricity  has 
ceased  to  be  a  curious  toy,  and  now  carries  half  man- 
kind upon  their  daily  journeys,  it  lights  our  cities 
till  they  outshine  the  moon  and  stars,  and  reduces  to 
our  service  a  score  of  hitherto  unsuspected  metals; 
we  clamber  to  the  pole  of  our  globe,  scale  every  moun- 
tain, soar  into  the  air,  learn  how  to  overcome  the 
malaria  that  barred  our  white  races  from  the  tropics, 
and  how  to  draw  the  sting  from  a  hundred  such 
agents  of  death.  Our  old  cities  are  being  rebuilt  in 
towering  marble;  great  new  cities  rise  to  vie  with 

412 


THE  HUMAN  ADVENTURE 

them.  Never,  it  would  seem,  has  man  been  so 
various  and  busy  and  persistent,  and  there  is  no 
intimation  of  any  check  to  the  expansion  of  his 
energies. 

And  all  this  continually  accelerated  advance  has 
come  through  the  quickening  and  increase  of  man's 
intelligence  and  its  reinforcement  through  speech  and 
writing.  All  this  has  come  in  spite  of  fierce  instincts 
that  make  him  the  most  combatant  and  destructive 
of  animals,  and  in  spite  of  the  revenge  Nature  has 
attempted  time  after  time  for  his  rebellion  against  her 
routines,  in  the  form  of  strange  diseases  and  nearly 
universal  pestilences.  All  this  has  come  as  a  neces- 
sary consequence  of  the  first  obscure  gleaming  of 
deliberate  thought  and  reason  through  the  veil  of  his 
animal  being.  To  begin  with,  he  did  not  know  what 
he  was  doing.  He  sought  his  more  immediate  satis- 
faction and  safety  and  security.  He  still  appre- 
hends imperfectly  the  change  that  comes  upon  him. 
The  illusion  of  separation  that  makes  animal  life, 
that  is  to  say,  passionate  competing  and  breeding  and 
dying,  possible,  the  blinkers  Nature  has  put  upon  us 
that  we  may  clash  against  and  sharpen  one  another, 
still  darken  our  eyes.  We  live  not  life  as  yet,  but  in 
millions  of  separated  lives,  still  unaware  except  in 
rare  moods  of  illumination  that  we  are  more  than 
those  fellow  beasts  of  ours  who  drop  off  from  the 
tree  of  life  and  perish  alone.  It  is  only  in  the  last 
three  or  four  thousand  years,  and  through  weak  and 
tentative  methods  of  expression,  through  clumsy 

413 


cosmogonies  and  theologies,  and  with  incalculable 
confusion  and  discoloration,  that  the  human  mind 
has  felt  its  way  towards  its  undying  being  in  the  race. 
Man  still  goes  to  war  against  himself,  prepares  fleets 
and  armies  and  fortresses,  like  a  sleep-walker  who 
wounds  himself,  like  some  infatuated  barbarian  who 
hacks  his  own  limbs  with  a  knife. 

But  he  awakens.  The  nightmares  of  empire  and 
racial  conflict  and  war,  the  grotesques  of  trade 
jealousy  and  tariffs,  the  primordial  dream-stuff  of 
lewdness  and  -jealousy  and  cruelty,  pale  before  the 
daylight  which  filters  between  his  eyelids.  In  a  little 
while  we  individuals  will  know  ourselves  surely  for 
corpuscles  in  his  being,  for  thoughts  that  come  to- 
gether out  of  strange  wanderings  into  the  coherence 
of  a  waking  mind.  A  few  score  generations  ago  all 
living  things  were  in  our  ancestry.  A  few  score 
generations  ahead,  and  all  mankind  will  be  in  sober 
fact  descendants  from  our  blood.  In  physical  as  in 
mental  fact  we  separate  persons,  with  all  our  differ- 
ence and  individuality,  are  but  fragments,  set  apart 
for  a  little  while  in  order  that  we  may  return  to  the 
general  life  again  with  fresh  experiences  and  fresh 
acquirements,  as  bees  return  with  pollen  and  nourish- 
ment to  the  fellowship  of  the  hive. 

And  this  Man,  this  wonderful  child  of  old  earth, 
who  is  ourselves  in  the  measure  of  our  hearts  and 
minds,  does  but  begin  his  adventure  now.  Through 
all  time  henceforth  he  does  but  begin  his  adventure. 
This  planet  and  its  subjugation  is  but  the  dawn  of 

414 


THE  HUMAN  ADVENTURE 

his  existence.  In  a  little  while  he  will  reach  out  to 
the  other  planets,  and  take  that  greater  fire,  the  sun, 
into  his  service.  He  will  bring  his  solvent  intelli- 
gence to  bear  upon  the  riddles  of  his  individual  inter- 
action, transmute  jealousy  and  every  passion,  control 
his  own  increase,  select  and  breed  for  his  embodi- 
ment a  continually  finer  and  stronger  and  wiser  race. 
What  none  of  us  can  think  or  will,  save  in  a  dis- 
connected partiality,  he  will  think  and  will  col- 
lectively. Already  some  of  us  feel  our  merger  with 
that  greater  life.  There  come  moments  when  the 
thing  shines  out  upon  our  thoughts.  Sometimes  in 
the  dark  sleepless  solitudes  of  night,  one  ceases  to  be 
so-and-so,  one  ceases  to  bear  a  proper  name,  forgets 
one's  quarrels  and  vanities,  forgives  and  understands 
one's  enemies  and  oneself,  as  one  forgives  and  under- 
stands the  quarrels  of  little  children,  knowing  oneself 
indeed  to  be  a  being  greater  than  one's  personal 
accidents,  knowing  oneself  for  Man  on  his  planet, 
flying  swiftly  to  unmeasured  destinies  through  the 
starry  stillnesses  of  space. 


THE    END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


M\ay28 


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